Mikel Arteta Arsenal
What did you make of Calum Chambers performance given that it was his first Premier League start since December 2019?
I’m extremely happy with him. He deserved completely his chance to start the game because of the recovery he’s done, the preparation he’s done to get to the level he’s at at the moment and the way he trains and behaves every day. I think it was a really good game for him, for the needs that we had on the pitch and I think he had a really good performance.
That was Willian’s third assist in three games. What did you make of his contribution?
It’s always a difficult game to play here for the forwards the way they play here, but I thought he had some really good moments in the game. There were some moments where we struggled because we played their game for 25 minutes in the second half which they do that really well to weight the game where they want. It’s pretty difficult to get out of it when the ball is always stopping, when there are free kicks and goal kicks and throw ins, but it’s their game, but the moment we got control and we can use the spaces and he can have short relationships with his teammates I think he’s very efficient.
The team’s heads seemed to drop for about 25 minutes after you conceded that goal. Is that something you can try to address is some way?
It can happen individually for the player that made that, but it cannot happen to a team. It’s true that in the second half the way they started in the second half the way they were really direct, it stretches the structure that becomes a really open game you don’t have any composure in the game, or we didn’t have in that moment, and understanding that the pitch was really difficult to play, then is when we lose that. But I didn’t have the feeling that they didn’t have the belief that we could win the game and I think the answer that they had in the last 15 minutes was the answer, but it wasn’t enough to win the game.
You listed about eight or nine things you wanted to improve on and yet in the game they all seemed to happen. Does it almost feel like the message isn’t getting through sometimes?
No it is getting through, but sometimes we have just moments in the game. If you compare the game to the game we played a year ago here [at Turf Moor] it’s a different world and we completely deserved to win the game and a year ago we probably deserved to lose that game but the results are still the same, but a lot of things are very different. I’m honestly really disappointed that we didn’t win the game for the reasons that I already explained.
