Gabriel Martinelli is what success looks like when a rebuild works. He is also what success can discard.
Arsenal signed him from Ituano in 2019, when the club was still trying to find a way out of mediocrity. Seven years later he has 62 goals and 36 assists in 278 appearances, a Premier League medal and a place in the group that dragged Arsenal back into Europe’s elite. Now David Ornstein has reported talks with Al Hilal over a deal that could reach Arsenal’s £60 million valuation. Martinelli was left out against Manchester City in the Community Shield and again for the league opener against Coventry.
The instinctive response is to turn this into a football argument. Is Martinelli still good enough? Is Tzolis better? Does Arsenal need the money for Álvarez? Those questions matter, but they miss the more uncomfortable point.
Winning changes the morality of squad building.
During a rebuild, improvement is mostly additive. You sign Rice and everyone can see the level rise. You promote Saka and the future feels obvious. You keep players because continuity has value and because the squad still contains clear weaknesses. Supporters become attached to the people who carry the club through the climb.
A champion has fewer bad players to replace. Improvement starts to require good players losing their jobs.
That is where Arsenal are now. Martinelli can have given the club seven years of honest work and still be the player Arsenal decide to cash in on. Viktor Gyökeres can score heavily in a title-winning season and still find Álvarez arriving above him. Ethan Nwaneri can be one of the best academy talents Arsenal have produced and still be told he needs another loan because the midfield has become too crowded.
The process that created emotional loyalty is now producing decisions that offend it.
This is where Andrea Berta and Arteta have to be better than simply ruthless. Ruthlessness is easy when a player has failed. The harder version is looking at someone supporters love, accepting what he contributed and deciding the next version of the team needs something else.
Ian Wright criticised the handling of Martinelli this week, and that deserves attention. A club can decide to sell a player without allowing him to learn his status through squad sheets and transfer reporting. Arteta has spoken repeatedly about honesty with players. The way Martinelli leaves, if he leaves, becomes a test of whether that language survives when the club has leverage.
That matters because elite squads watch everything. Saka sees how Martinelli is treated. Rice sees it. Lewis-Skelly sees it. The next player Arsenal try to persuade to sign a long contract will see it too. A winning environment needs competition. It also needs players to believe that becoming surplus does not erase what came before.
There is a second danger. Clubs can become addicted to the idea of upgrading. Every summer produces a shinier profile, a better data set, a player with a different set of tools. If the threshold for staying becomes perfection, the squad loses continuity and the dressing room becomes transactional. Manchester City at their best under Guardiola turned over important players, but the spine lasted. Arsenal need the same distinction between necessary churn and compulsive churn.
Martinelli is a good case because selling him can make football sense. Tzolis has arrived. Eze can play from the left in certain structures. Arsenal are pursuing another elite attacker. Martinelli’s contract position also creates a moment where his value can fall quickly if the club waits.
None of that requires pretending he has become useless.
The strongest clubs are able to hold two thoughts at once. A player can matter to the history of a team and still become sellable. A manager can love what a player gave him and still decide that the next squad needs a different function.
Arsenal have spent years asking supporters to trust the process. The next phase asks something colder. Trust the decisions made after the process worked.
Martinelli can be sold. He cannot be made to feel like inventory.
