Arteta hails mature Arsenal performance as win builds further belief

Three points, a clean sheet, the extension of our unbeaten run in the league, leapfrogging Manchester City in the table, and the end of an eight-year wait for a league victory against the Blues made for a very satisfactory Sunday for those of an Arsenal persuasion.

The 1-0 victory, snatched in the 86th minute thanks to Gabriel Martinelli’s deflected strike, underlined a growing maturity in Mikel Arteta’s squad. Not only did his players go toe-to-toe with their opposite numbers, they also managed the emotions of the occasion staying calm in the face of first half terrace tetchiness.

Titles aren’t won in October, so nobody is getting carried away, but after the damage wrought by City on our collective psyche in the closing stages of last season, this result felt therapeutic.

“Certainly it sends a message to the team,” said Arteta afterwards. 

“Keep believing in what they are doing, they are a fantastic group of players, the way they try, the understanding, the chemistry that they have between them you sense it and you need it to beat that, today again really proud, I was proud on Tuesday when we lost the game [in Lens], and I am really proud again today as well to be part of that team.”

On Friday, the boss had played down talk of Arsenal having a psychological barrier against City. While the Gunners came into the game on a 12-game losing streak in the league, he made clear that very few of the current crop had lived through enough of those results for it to matter.

After the game, he reframed the situation, saying: “I don’t know if it was a barrier. Obviously, it’s something that we needed to go through.

“To beat them, first of all, you have to lose against them. We have to lose probably the way we lost at the Etihad [in April], because we lost in two different ways, last season when we were the better team in the first half and then we conceded the goal after Tomiyasu’s backpass and De Bruyne scoring. But the team showed a real maturity today, that maturity comes from experiences and sometimes you need that to become a better team.”

For City, a third defeat in four games, all without the suspended midfielder Rodri and injured talisman Kevin de Bruyne, hints at growing pains for a side with a new look since winning the treble.

After a summer in which Ilkay Gundogan, Riyad Mahrez, Joao Cancelo and Aymeric Laporte all departed, new boys Matheus Nunes, Jeremy Doku, Josko Gvardiol and Mateo Kovacic are still getting up to speed. If they gel, and invariably they will under Guardiola, they will still fancy their chances of a fourth consecutive league title.

All the same, Arteta was hugely impressed by the way his side dealt with the task at hand. That his side came away without conceding was even more of a boon.

“I was thinking about that in the 92nd minute, saying that we haven’t had that many [clean sheets], and against the best team in the world, we managed to do it.

“The application and the love that we had today for defending was what we needed, was in every player and it was a necessity.

“If you concede against them, you know afterwards it’s extremely difficult because they don’t give much away. So, it was really important.”

Arteta can now spend the next 10 days reviewing the latest tranche of matches while many of the squad head off on international duty. When they return, we’ll be straight back into another run of games every three days, starting with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.