Mikel Merino: ‘I’m adapting to being a striker – I like the contact, I never back down’

Since the Arsenal midfielder became the Arsenal striker, he has scored more than Harry Kane, Lautaro Martínez and Erling Haaland and, told that now, he is laughing again. “The beauty of stats is you can present them the way that makes you look good,” he says but it’s not just stats. Ian Wright described him as the No 9 the club needed and Ian Wright, he knows, “isn’t just anyone”.