Mikel Arteta Arsenal

#PLStories – #MikeArteta admits that #ThomasPartey change was meant to change the game for Arsenal #ArsenalFC

How much do you feel this result shows you’ve made progress in the last 12 months considering where you were last year. Yes, I’ve been saying that for a while. I can see probably more things as I can see internally, I know the process and what’s happened and how much has changed since we’ve been here a year ago. I think the difference is really big today. We are really pleased with the result, with the goals we scored and the way we played in big moments in the game. As well we have to be very clear with ourselves, we gave three goals to the opponents and they took one and at that level they are going to punish you. So, if we are going to go to the next level we have to stop that and be more ruthless. When you are that dominant and playing that well just kill the games. Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will auto-play soon8Cancel When you see moments that give you a heart attack like tonight does that make you question you conviction to play out from the back? No. It’s just when we have to play. You know they have to play the ball to this player, but when is the difference. It’s now, a second earlier or a second later and that gives the opponent a chance to press or to intercept a pass or not. Obviously the difference is to discriminate the decision making when it has to be done is what it dictates in the next action after whether you are successful or not. But it’s not about encouraging the team or stopping them when we have to play it’s about learning to understand when to do it and that's crucial. If not it creates insecurity and a game that is totally under control brings the team into an insecurity mode because it just brings the opponent into the game with how much we’ve done and the chances that we’ve missed and it’s unnecessary. It’s true though that the reaction after that to score two goals, and probably we should have scored one more, it’s great to see as well. Did you take any of the players off tonight due to injuries or with an eye on Spurs? No it was all tactical decisions, or things that we wanted to change in the game. Read More Related Articles Read More Related Articles What would you say to people who say Arsenal’s biggest opponent is themselves? Yeah they are not far off. The goals that we have conceded or the chances that we have conceded they are coming from ourselves. That’s really positive because the moment we stop it we’re going to be a lot stronger. But the reality is that we have to stop immediately because if not the games are all the time there to drop points. It’s my responsibility, I make them play the way we want to play. It’s just understanding risks and rewards, where they are and as I said before, when. We have to get better at that because if not it creates tension and insecurity and it creates belief in the opponent and that’s unnecessary. It must make every game tense It does but it’s what it is. Sometime when you go through a progress like this you have to be ready to go through these situations. I’m ready to do that, but again knowing all the time where the risks and the rewards are. And if the rewards are not bigger we should not take the risks. Mikel Arteta looks tense on the touchline during Arsenal's 3-1 win over Olympiacos in the Europa League Round of 16 It’s an excellent result but you sound like you’re not happy with the performance? No, because I want to be much more ruthless because as a team I don’t want to give anything to the opponents. The opponents are good enough by themselves to create problems, to create situations, to change organisational structures, individual quality that they have in this competition. So I want to give zero to the opponents, and whatever we do we have to be on it so much, so I would like the opponent to do the same. So I am happy with the result but I'm not satisfied with how we controlled the game through 95 minutes and that’s something that we have to improve. You said the decision to substituteParteywas tactical. Can you explain why? Because I wanted to change him and to bring somebody else in to try to find some other stuff and change the shape that we were playing inside. Read More Related Articles Read More Related Articles How crucial was MohamedElneny’sstrike? I don’t know there is still another game to play and in this competition and with this level of opponent anything can happen. So we have to be prepared to take the game as if it’s 0-0 and go and win the game at the Emirates and then we will be through. With Mo in particular and the subs I'm extremely delighted because I know how much they want to play and they are key in this competition. If you want to be successful you need your subs to make an impact. They’ve done it again. Mo in particular because how he’s been training so hard to improve his shooting range with Roundy (assistant manager Steve Round) and he got his reward for the team. Does that show the character of the team to come back like that? Yes, and it has happened in many games already and that has to become a habit. When you are able to react against a team in any circumstances, it doesn’t matter the disappointment, the moment or what happens, individually and collectively you need to know that you can get that response and the team is able to overcome any situation. So that’s really encouraging for the team. Sign up to our Arsenal newsletter for the latest transfer news By signing up for our Arsenal newsletter, you will receive a once-daily email, focused around goings-on at Emirates Stadium. You won't miss a thing when it comes to the Gunners - you'll get all you need to know directly into your inbox. We'll also send out special newsletters with any big breaking news too. And with the January transfer window now open there's plenty of content to get your teeth into. How do you sign up? It's easy and only takes seconds. Simply type your email address into the box at the top of this article - or any article on the Arsenal section of football.london in fact - labelled 'Get the biggest daily stories by email' and click 'Subscribe'. And that's it, you're all set. If you decide later that you no longer wish to receive the emails, simply follow the unsubscribe link in one of the newsletters - but we don't think you'll want to. For more details, click here. The only thing that had been missing from Martin Odegaard in recent weeks was a goal wasn’t it? He can do that. He needs to click by doing that. The same with Emile, the same with Willian is that they are there to make things happen and win games. Winning games is decided in the boxes and they have to be more encouraged to attack those situations to take risks, to take shots, to take those opportunities to dribble because that’s there quality. Hopefully that’s going to bring Martin the confidence. We scored two wondergoals from outside of the box and that’s another important way of getting goals and it’s going to be crucial.
Mikel Arteta Arsenal

#PLStories- #SokratisPapastathopoulos feeling strange on being on opposite side of Arsenal within 2 months #ARSENALFC

Here are your Arsenal evening headlines for Wednesday, October 10. Mislinat reveals reasons for leaving Sven Mislintat revealed that he left Arsenal when he was overlooked for the vacant technical director role at the club following the restructuring of the management process after Ivan Gazidis departed in 2018. Mislintat was brought to the club during Arsene Wenger's final season in north London. Wenger left at the end of the 2017/18 season. Gazidis left by the end of the year, and after Mislintat was passed over for more responsibility, he too exited. "I joined Arsenal to work with Arsene and to prove myself in the best competitions, the Premier League," he said in an interview with The Athletic. Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will auto-play soon8Cancel "My plan was to learn from one of the best managers in football history, support and challenge him to win as many games as possible and the day he would stop his career as a manager, maybe watch him change to the board level to preserve the values and philosophy of Arsenal and his work, ambition and legacy. "Arsene left after the end of the season of course and a few months later Ivan Gazidis left to become CEO at Milan. At that point, Arsenal restructured its leadership. "I applied for the newly-created technical director role and Raul Sanllehi and Vinai Venkatesham, who succeeded Ivan in a co-leadership role at Arsenal, decided to go for someone else. "We then agreed in a very respectful way that I would leave, all entirely amicable." Sokratis' exclusive interview Sokratis gave an exclusive interview to football.london ahead of the Europa League tie between Arsenal and Olympiacos. The Greek defender was released by the Gunners in January. He then signed with Olympiacos, who knocked Arsenal out of the Europa League at the Round of 32 stage last year. Ahead of the tie, he says that he is looking forward to facing his former team and many of his friends. Read More Related Articles Read More Related Articles "It was a little bit strange because a couple of months ago I was with them," Sokratis said. "I still speak a lot with the people at Arsenal because I was there for two and a half years. "I'm in touch with the players. I spoke with them and they are excited that we play against each other. I'm close to a lot of them: David [Luiz], Granit [Xhaka], [Pierre-Emerick] Aubameyang, Laca [Lacazette], Hector Bellerin and also Cedric Soares - these are the players I speak a lot with. "I spoke with them and of course it's strange [to be facing Arsenal] but I want to win - I want to go to the next round with Olympiacos. Friendship is one thing but qualification is another." You can read Sokratis' full interview with football.london here. Smith Rowe injury update Mikel Arteta has issued an update on the availability of Emile Smith Rowe, who missed the weekend's draw against Burnley after being substituted in the 3-1 win over Leicester City after he felt some discomfort in his hip. Sign up to our Arsenal newsletter for the latest transfer news By signing up for our Arsenal newsletter, you will receive a once-daily email, focused around goings-on at Emirates Stadium. You won't miss a thing when it comes to the Gunners - you'll get all you need to know directly into your inbox. We'll also send out special newsletters with any big breaking news too. And with the January transfer window now open there's plenty of content to get your teeth into. How do you sign up? It's easy and only takes seconds. Simply type your email address into the box at the top of this article - or any article on the Arsenal section of football.london in fact - labelled 'Get the biggest daily stories by email' and click 'Subscribe'. And that's it, you're all set. If you decide later that you no longer wish to receive the emails, simply follow the unsubscribe link in one of the newsletters - but we don't think you'll want to. For more details, click here. Ahead of Thursday's Europa League Last 16 first leg contest against Olympiacos, Arteta said that Smith Rowe will have a full training session to see if he can feature at all. "He is close to returning," said the Arsenal boss. "He is going to have a full session today to see if he can be involved for tomorrow's game. After training, we will know exactly where we are with him." Read the full story here
Mikel Arteta Arsenal

#PLStories- #MikelArteta happy for #DaniCeballos after Arsenal go through in #EuropaLeague #ArsenalFC

Mikel Arteta says he is happy for Dani Ceballos after Arsenal scored a late winner to beat Benfica in the Europa League round of 32 second leg clash. The Spaniard was culpable for both of Benfica's goals on Thursday night and Arteta says the uncharacteristic mistakes would have affected the midfielder if the Gunners were knocked out of the tournament. Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will auto-play soon8Cancel Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's late winner spared Arsenal's blushes as they secured their place in the round of 16 with the draw to be made on Friday afternoon. "I'm especially happy for him because he really loves this game and he does everything in the right way to be as prepared as possible," said Arteta. This is football and you can always learn and make up for your errors! Up to the next round! Thank goodness! Let's go Gunners! Thanks @Aubameyang7 @Arsenal #EuropaLeague #VamosGunners #NextRound #ArsenalVsBenfica pic.twitter.com/VLbg0JCR6x — Daniel Ceballos (@DaniCeballos46) February 25, 2021 "You can see how he celebrates every single goal. He doesn’t have a ten-year contract at the club, he’s on loan, and still feels and defends this club in the best possible way. "I think someone like him deserves good things to happen to him in football." Ceballos himself responded immediately after the game to apologies and thank his captain for bailing him out. "When he made that mistake, if that would have cost the team and gone out of the competition that would have been mentally really tough. "That is when you need the players in the team like the ones we have with Auba, Bukayo [Saka] creating the situations, Kieran scoring the goal to save him and out of a difficult situation we created a really nice moment."
Mikel Arteta Arsenal

#PLStories- #MikelArteta backs #GranitXhaka and highlights #EuropaLeague importance #ArsenalFC

How important is the Europa League for this generation and the football club? Well huge, because the club has to be represented in Europe, that’s 100%. And ideally obviously in the Champions League. The thing is that the competition in this league now it’s so big that a few teams who took this for granted for many, many years it’s not the case anymore. So now the Europa League becomes a huge competition. If you see how the competition has evolved in the last four or five years with the teams involved, you will say that it’s another Champions League competition even if people doesn’t treat it that way. For us it’s vital. We want to carry on playing in the competition. It’s a trophy and we’re gonna go for it. Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will auto-play soon8Cancel Arsenal in terms of prestige have to be in Europe don’t they? Absolutely, yes. How important is Granit Xhaka to the team and why do you think some fans have never really appreciated him? I think it’s more related, at least since I’ve been here and I know more about what happened in the past about the incidents you are talking about that have left some people disappointed or expecting a different reaction or not liking what happened. We talk about what happened this season in terms of performances and consistency. I think he’s even better than last season. Certainly after the Burnley game I think he made another step forward and he’s played because he deserves to play. Read More Related Articles Read More Related Articles In terms of your style is he unique with what he brings to the team? Well on that left side he gives you something that he has unique qualities to do that, considering as well the qualities we have in our left back position with Kieran. And it’s good because they compliment each other really, really well. We can tweak it and do it in different ways but it’s not only about his qualities as a player but the character and the personality that he brings to the team every time he steps in. How difficult is to convince fans, given the club’s Champions League history, that the Europa League is a competition worth being in? I think it’s impossible to convince them that the Europa League is the Champions League because it’s not and the history of this club is about being successful and winning the Premier League and winning the Champions League. But knowing the past and the difficulty we’ve been through in the last few years this becomes a really important competition for us. We all start to realise, maybe it’s still too early, but if we manage to do something in this competition, we are going to be happy about it definitely. We try to convince them with the performances and reaching the levels that we want. Granit Xhaka has taken on the mantle of Arsenal's midfield lynchpin in recent games. Next season there will be two places in the Europa League and then there’s the Europa Conference League for the third team, are you worried about being in that one next season? Well I'm worried because we still have a lot of work to do in the league to get close to those positions. It’s still mathematically possible but we need to be much more consistent to do that so I'm worried about tomorrow first and then let’s go to Leicester and try to win and let’s see how we can finish the season. It seems that after 2024 we might see more of the bigger clubs guaranteed places in the Champions League by coefficients. Do you think that’s a healthy direction for the league to go? I don’t know we need to know more detail and more explanation about what the final idea is. We need to maintain some detail of the merits that you have to achieve to enter the competition. But as well obviously with this pandemic and the evolution of the industry, it probably needs some changes as well to make it sustainable and attractive again. It’s like everything, probably in a few years’ time we will talk about something very normal with the teams with the changes that happen in May. But hopefully we can click the right button and nail it. Sign up to our Arsenal newsletter for the latest transfer news By signing up for our Arsenal newsletter, you will receive a once-daily email, focused around goings-on at Emirates Stadium. You won't miss a thing when it comes to the Gunners - you'll get all you need to know directly into your inbox. We'll also send out special newsletters with any big breaking news too. And with the January transfer window now open there's plenty of content to get your teeth into. How do you sign up? It's easy and only takes seconds. Simply type your email address into the box at the top of this article - or any article on the Arsenal section of football.london in fact - labelled 'Get the biggest daily stories by email' and click 'Subscribe'. And that's it, you're all set. If you decide later that you no longer wish to receive the emails, simply follow the unsubscribe link in one of the newsletters - but we don't think you'll want to. For more details, click here. What would you change if you could? Certainly the fixtures at the moment. The amount of games that the players have to play with very little rest and then the pressure they have to deal with as well with the national teams and the competitions it’s too condensed at the moment. I think we are risking the players and the quality of the game so in my opinion that should be the priority.
Pierre Emerick Aubameyang

#PLStories- #MikelArteta on #PierreEmerickAubameyang missed chances after draw with Benfica #ARSENALFC

Frustrating with the chances you had but an all-round dominant performance. How do you sum up the game? Yes exactly that. I think we had to leave the stadium today with much more than what we have right now. Everything is completely open till next Thursday. We have some positives to take from the game because we dominated the game and we had patches of really good moments where we created some big chances. We weren’t ruthless enough in the opponents’ box and the disappointing thing obviously is the way we concede the goal. Auba scored a hattrick on Sunday but missed some big chances tonight. What do you put that down to? Well, these thing happen. He was at the end of the biggest chances that we had tonight. He was a real threat again that’s why we played him today against this opponent with the line that they proposed all the time. Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will auto-play soon8Cancel He was unlucky not to score two or three tonight because in normal circumstances that would be the case. BukayoSaka is becoming more important and stepped up while everyone else is struggling to find the net? I think he’s in a great moment, he’s full of confidence, he’s been really important in recent results. His form is the highest probably since I’ve been here and he’s been really consistent. He needs to keep going and doing what he’s doing because at the moment he’s a really important part of the team. Read More Related Articles Read More Related Articles How much of a challenge is it balancing the fact that Saka is a really important player with the reality that he is a teenager? I think we have to protect him and keep expectations where they should be. But I'm not gonna put a break in his development or what he can do week in week out. I think we have to support him, give him the best possible advice all the time and then manage his minutes so he can maintain this level. Sign up to our Arsenal newsletter for the latest transfer news By signing up for our Arsenal newsletter, you will receive a once-daily email, focused around goings-on at Emirates Stadium. You won't miss a thing when it comes to the Gunners - you'll get all you need to know directly into your inbox. We'll also send out special newsletters with any big breaking news too. And with the January transfer window now open there's plenty of content to get your teeth into. How do you sign up? It's easy and only takes seconds. Simply type your email address into the box at the top of this article - or any article on the Arsenal section of football.london in fact - labelled 'Get the biggest daily stories by email' and click 'Subscribe'. And that's it, you're all set. If you decide later that you no longer wish to receive the emails, simply follow the unsubscribe link in one of the newsletters - but we don't think you'll want to. For more details, click here. Is it hard to manage his minutes when you know your team is better with Bukayo on the pitch? It is at the moment because he’s been a real threat, he’s involved in a lot of goals all the time and the consistency of the performances makes him a starter obviously. It’s a fine balance, but at the same time when he is 19-years-old we have to protect him.