Arsenal: Fans lavish Ainsley Maitland-Niles with praise after performance versus West Ham United

Arsenal fans have been lavishing Ainsley Maitland-Niles with praise after the right-back’s performance in the win over West Ham United.

The England youth international was drafted in at the last second after Hector Bellerin had to withdraw from the starting line up due to a hamstring injury.

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His late introduction didn’t seem to affect him as he made a monstrous impact, completing the joint-second most dribbles (2), being the joint-most fouled player (3), making the joint-most tackles (3) and joint-second most clearances (3) in the Arsenal team (via WhoScored).

It was his first Premier League appearance for the club since he was sent off in the first half of the 3-2 win over Aston Villa way back in September.

Fans were full of praise for the player after he was drafted in at the last second as they took to Twitter to laud him. One supporter even claimed that he will go on to become the next Marcelo.

Here is a selection of tweets from the north London faithful:

Maitland Niles is our best RB, he needs to work on his awareness but he’s not very far from being a top RB, already better than Bissaka.

— Abstrakt (@panda_arsenal) December 9, 2019

Give Maitland Niles a wig and he’ll be the next Marcelo.

— Abstrakt (@panda_arsenal) December 9, 2019

Chambers was solid at the back, Maitland-Niles impressed, Torreira was superb, involved in two of our goals, and the front three of Pepe, Martinelli and Aubameyang terrified the West Ham defence.

— ArsenalArena (@ArsenalArena) December 10, 2019

Also Maitland-Niles masterclass

— DonDaddyD #VoteLabour (@Dondaddyd) December 10, 2019

he won’t get a mention because of all sorts of reasons but i thought maitland niles was really solid today.

— (((Danny Sampson))) #KROENKEOUT (@SampsonDDMP) December 10, 2019