Arsenal loanee reveals Gunners have been watching his performances at Chesterfield

The 21-year-old is on loan from the Premier League leaders until the end of the season after joining in the summer.

He said: “They watched the FA Cup and a couple of the league games. They watch it online as well if they are not able to watch it in person. The feedback has been really positive.”

The Nigerian has made 22 appearances in total, starting six times, with three of those coming in the last week, and has impressed with his energetic displays and driving runs forward.

“At first it was quite frustrating that I was not starting any games but at that point we were winning all of our games and we were undefeated so I just had to be patient,” he said. “You can’t be changing a winning team and I would probably have done the same thing. I kept training hard and kept making a few appearances off the bench and doing quite well and then the manager started trusting me.”

Akinola’s role has changed recently with the youngster being tasked with playing higher up the pitch and that has resulted in a couple of man of the match awards.

He said: “Wherever the manager tells me to play I will just do it. Against Aldershot I found it really good, I had so much space to drive into but in this one (Solihull Moors) I did not get many opportunities to do that. In the second-half the manager put me a bit deeper and we started playing a bit better.”

Akinola started against Solihull Moors in Saturday’s 0-0 draw and it was a game he felt they should have won.

“It is just really frustrating that we can’t put the ball in the back of the net but I am sure that when it does we will score quite a few,” he added.