Mikel Arteta hails Arsenal youngsters as major positive from pre-season tour of USA

Mikel Arteta believes Arsenal’s young players have shown they are ready to fight for first-team minutes with their performances on the club’s tour to the US.

Arsenal concluded their time in the US overnight with a 2-1 defeat to Liverpool in Philadelphia, which followed on from a win over Manchester United and a draw against Bournemouth.

Arteta took 12 academy players on tour, with this summer’s Copa America and Euros delaying the return of senior players.

Ethan Nwaneri was among those to benefit, with the midfielder starting two of Arsenal’s three games in the US and coming on for the final 20 minutes against the Reds.

Fellow 17-year-old Ayden Heaven also started two matches, while Myles Lewis-Skelly caught the eye at left-back.

“I’m really pleased with all of them,” said Arteta. “Unfortunately I wanted to give opportunities to all of them, [but] we didn’t have enough time to do so.

“But especially the ones that played, I think they performed and responded incredibly well.

“So that’s something that we take from the tour as well, that we have a lot of talent there that we want to use and they showed that they are very much pushing to earn the right to play with us.”

Arteta named a strong side for their clash with Liverpool overnight, but new signing Riccardo Calafiori was left out of the squad.

The defender, who joined Arsenal on Monday for £42million from Bologna, was not selected as he only had one full training session with his new team-mates.

“We had to manage him,” said Arteta. “He had a very busy 48 hours before his flight.

“Then it was the jet-lag and he hasn’t trained with the team yet. We want to build him slowly, to get to know him first. We will have plenty of time to see him.”