Auba scored in the cup, but do he and some of the other senior players need to do more in games against Palace and a similar one that you’ll face against Newcastle alongside the youngsters who have done so well?
Mikel Arteta said “Yeah but not about individuals, but as a collective we have to do more. And then for sure when you look at the way these games are won there are individual actions rather than collective actions. It’s a moment of spark that has to open the game up and then the game becomes much easier to get what you want. But we missed that [against Palace]. It’s not just Auba, it’s other players. A lot of simple balls that we gave away without any real pressure that allowed Palace to run in transition. But for me it was more than anything a little bit lack of freshness. It’s a lot of fixtures a lot of games, but we cannot use that as an excuse. I think we have to do better.”
There’s been talk that it would have been good to have a a circuit breaker and have a break. Would you have supported that?
Mikel Arteta said “No. I think I prefer to play. I think we all prefer to play. We are on it, we all made big efforts and tried to contribute the best possible way to make things work and happen. I feel really lucky that we are still playing. And it’s still safe and the right thing to do then let’s keep doing it.”
With Newcastle it took 114 minutes to break them down last time in the FA Cup game. What do you need to do to break them down inside the 90 minutes?
Mikel Arteta said “Well we did a lot of good things there, but we didn’t have the capacity to put the ball in the net in our situations that we created. Against them, be ruthless in front of goal. The moment we created the chances, the mindset to attack them as much as possible, hit the target as many times as we possibly can, and we’ll be fine.”
As a former playmaker how difficult is it on the touchline when you have a goalless draw?
Mikel Arteta said “You saw me out there. I think you are there trying to push the team. This is, in my opinion, where we are missing the fans so much because it’s another big element that pushes you, that drives you, that is forcing you all the time to attack and attack. But you need the right structure and organisation to attack these type of blocks and you need the quality, the freshness, the timing and the cohesion to finish the actions better than we’ve done [against Palace]. But overall I think it was a fair result.
Are these games where you need your more experience players to come up with the guile?
Mikel Arteta said “For me it doesn’t make a lot of difference between old and youth. They are squad players, they are contributing in the same way. Or they should contribute in the same way. Because they are young they don’t have less responsibility. If they are picked to play in the starting 11 it’s because they deserve it more than somebody else on the bench. So I don’t make the difference. Everybody has to have the approach to the game that I am here and I am going to win it for the team.
