Mikel Arteta was delighted with the way his side swatted away Everton at the Emirates as a brace from Gabriel Martinelli and strikes from BUkayo Saka and Martin Odegaard sealed a 4-0 win.
After the match, the boss spoke to Norwegian television station Viaplay. Here’s what he had to say…
On the performance…
Very good, I’m very happy. It is the game that we had in hand. Obviously, we were playing against a team that we lost to not many weeks ago and they are extremely well organised and the game started with a lack of fluidity and understanding of what we had to do. After, we picked it up, scored the goals in crucial moments and at the end, I think it was a very dominant and satisfying victory.
On what he’s most pleased about…
That the team shows maturity. When the game starts to get complicated, we find a way to overcome the situation, to start to read what we need to do better. When we needed to have passes to attract them after 2-0, we really controlled the game and then we have that capacity to threaten them in the goal and we wanted more and more and more and I really like that about the team.
On needing to be patient searching for the opener…
Yeah, it’s a team [Everton] that really frustrates you, they are really well organised, they don’t need much to create transition moments, set pieces and you start to defend your box. We talked a lot about that and I think we showed a lot of emotional control.
On it being difficult to pick his team with so many star performers…
It is difficult because they give me headaches. We’re going to try now, we’re going to have a game every three days so we’re going to try and use everybody because they deserve to play.
On being five points clear of Manchester City…
It is what it is today, the important thing is what it looks like at the end of May and there’s still a long journey ahead of us.
We’ve got super Mik Arteta!
Most frustrating thing about Arteta being so successful is that all these other clubs started to follow the same plan and giving their managers more time. And Man Utd turned it around a bit and now they think they will win quadruple. I think they will run out of steam once team figure our Rashford. Potter is doing an amazing job – for Chelsea’s rivals. Not even sure what’s going on over at Spu*s. My point is you can give many coaches many years and many new players but if you don’t have the clarity, the vision and the single… Read more »
Talksport commentator last night “it could be a three horse race for the title” – are you fucking serious mate?
The Man Utd Media hype is sickening. Nothing against ETH but he came into a good side, and invested £250+ million and they’re making out that he’s done something miraculous. They will be a threat next year if they get a good No.9, but teams will work them out easier.
Great result and performance. Such a strong bench too.
Fingers crossed!
Provided we don’t pick up any more injuries it seems we are set to get stronger from here
I cannot wait until Gabi Jesus is back!! It will strike even more fear into teams, and he is going to be hungry as F***
So happy. Take a bow, super Mik.
Remember when the Invincibles were such a good team already but we still added Reyes in January? Trossard feels like that.
a lot of what Miki is saying to our squad is to believe in the plan, our style of play, and whether we are behind, drawing or winning to stick to it which is where the maturity comes in, we have a talented young squad that believes in his system and psychology, big credit to him and his staff to offload our captain and some others when things wasn’t going right, we all questioned this at the time, his recruitments at start of this season and January have been proven, and his endeavours to get our young players to put… Read more »
We didn’t ‘all’ question it at the time.
I am just glad VAR remembered to draw the lines today otherwise it would be called offside for the 2nd goal.
This shows patience is a virtue. I also pays to have a plan and stick to it and not to listen too much to pundits.
True, in real time and on first replay, it looked like obvious offside. But on close look at the replays, it became clear Martinelli was at least in line with the ball. I was busy celebrating even before VAR rewarded it, knowing the sad fucks could not cheat us again.
anyone noticed Arteta didnt celebrate eac of our goals?
He still respects deeply the clubs he had played for….