William Saliba has labelled Mikel Merino as the 'best striker in the world' following Arsenal's important 2-0 win over Leicester City. The 28-year-old midfielder was utilised as a make-shift target-man in the Gunners' victory at the King Power Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

Shortly after coming on for Raheem Sterling, in the second half, Merino netted a double, grabbing three crucial points in the Premier League title race. During the January transfer window, Mikel Arteta regularly called on the board to bolster his squad with numerous forwards nursing injuries.

Despite publicly asking for reinforcements on numerous occasions, the Spaniard's requests ultimately fell on deaf ears, leaving him disappointed. Arteta said: "We had a clear intention which is always when a window opens for us to explore the opportunities to improve our squad with players that can make an impact.

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"With players injured, we've been impacted - and we haven't achieved it. We are disappointed in that sense but as well we are very aware that we only want to bring certain kinds of players and we have to be very disciplined with that as well. I think that we were.

"It's in the profile, a player that we believe can make us much better. Financially there is a lot of ways, and a lot of things that we must stay in the lane that has taken us this far and from there try to improve."

Without a senior striker in his squad, Arteta fielded a front-three of Sterling, Leandro Trossard and Ethan Nwaneri against Leicester City. Desperate to break the deadlock in the East Midlands, the Arsenal boss then rolled the dice and brought on Merino to lead the front-line.

The Spain international fired his side to victory, earning himself the title as the 'best striker in the world'. After the match, Merino marked his heroics with a celebratory post on Instagram - which he brilliant captioned: "'Number 9' day at work'..."

Declan Rice, Jurrien Timber and Myles Lewis-Skelly flooded the former Real Sociedad man's comments section, but one message from Saliba stood out. Under Merino's post, the 23-year-old defender wrote: "Best striker in the world [love heart eyes emoji]."

Speaking to reporters after the game, Arteta described Merino as a 'good threat'. The Gunners boss said: "It's a good threat because he can smell danger. He can anticipate the action. He's got really good timing to arrive to certain areas.

"And then, obviously, he has the capacity to execute with a lot of parts of his body. And he needed the delivery. He certainly had that as well and he put it in the back of the net."

Merino has enjoyed an excellent start to his new career - as a striker - taking the wheel from Kai Havertz, who's struggled to impress this season. However, Arteta has insisted his players will need to share the workload in the final third in the absence of a senior frontman.

"We're going to have to share that and we know that," said the Arsenal manager. "We're going to have various contexts, and sometimes we're going to have to make a sub because a player is not performing or because the opposition is doing something else - or because he's got a yellow card or he's fatigued.

"And that's going to restrict what we can do, really, in terms of the personnel. But we have prepared for different scenarios. Then those scenarios have to work. Hopefully, they will work as good as Mikel worked today."