Mikel Arteta says Arsenal have returned from Dubai “fully recharged” after a “phenomenal” warm-weather training camp.
The Gunners return to action on Saturday when Crystal Palace visit Emirates Stadium and supporters are hoping the team have left their travails behind them following a run of three consecutive defeats before the winter break.
After the hectic festive schedule, Arteta allowed friends and family to travel with the players for a camp that blended downtime with training and sponsors’ commitments.
“It was great,” said the boss when asked about the trip.
“It was a phenomenal camp in every sense. We worked really hard on the things that we wanted to do and we recharged our batteries.
“Obviously, the context, changing the environment and beautiful weather helps. The togetherness and the moments that we shared together were great. We feel fully recharged.”
On his highlights of the trip, he added: “The beautiful moments that we spent together. When you have families, kids around and mixing life and job, I think it’s something extremely necessary because we are living their lives, they are living our lives and if we want this to make sense then really everybody has to be part of it, I think it’s a really positive thing to do.”
Arsenal were top of the table on Christmas Day but damaging league defeats to West Ham and Fulham coupled with an FA Cup exit at the hands of Liverpool have really sapped morale.
While away, Arteta has been keen to remind his players of all the positive things they’ve achieved in the first half of the season.
“It gave us the opportunity to look at things with a bit of perspective,” he said.
“As well, to analyse what we’ve been doing and we take a lot of positives from the first six months of the competition even though results haven’t gone our way in the last few games.
“When you look at what we have produced in terms of the Premier League, with any other team we are up there.”
Having worked so hard to install a new playing identity over during his four-year tenure, the boss is keen that his players continue to believe in what they are doing.
“Continue to be who we are,” he replied when asked what his focus is at the moment.
“Defeats cannot make you lose who you are. Because, if you do that, then you were never who you said you were. We have to continue to be ourselves.
“There are certain details, certain marginal gains that we have to improve and evolve.
This is the beautiful thing about my job as well, is constantly find the evolution of a team and what it needs to keep winning.”
The biggest issue prior to the break was an inefficiency in the final third. The Gunners dominated the defeats to West Ham and Liverpool but couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net.
With new signings looking unlikely, Arteta is keen that his squad share the responsibility for overcoming their mental block in front of goal, and in all other areas of the pitch.
“We have to share goals,” he said. “We are responsible for everything. On set pieces, the goalkeeper is responsible, the striker is responsible. When there is a throw-in, everybody is responsible for what’s going to happen in that throw-in. We have to share that responsibility, like we’ve always done.”
Let’s go with a run of 18 matches unbeaten – 15 Wins and 3 draws gets us the title for shizzle!
Tactically we have to evolve and be more flexible. We can’t keep going wide to Saka and Martinelli every time with slow and predictable buildup.
Better fucking be recharged! Bunch of dudes paid 10s of millions of dollars a year get to jet off for a couple weeks to the tropics.
Sure refs are fucked, league is run by a bunch of bandits, but we’ve been piss poor lately. No more excuses – the forwards need to step the fuck up and start scoring goals.
Dubai is north of the Tropic of Cancer therefore not in the tropics, the rest of your points stand.
Fair – my bad!
Well said
Not sure I would use the phenomenal for a training camp. He likes these highly emotive buzz words. Like incredible, amazing. It’s not translating to that on the pitch. We’ve been relatively average and more recently below average. I can’t remember one game where I thought, wow what an amazing display that was. I hope we can find some form, but if not, we have a very highly paid bunch of underachievers to deal with again.
Brighton was ‘phenomenal’ 😉 and with better finishing would have been a dominant result. City at home was exceptional, we know how good they are. We haven’t looked ourselves lately but optimistic it will improve after the break. COYG
Jesus. Get a bit of perspective.
Yes they’re highly paid. Get over it. These boys do things most of can even dream of. Fucking good luck to them.
Underachievers. They and their predecessors were finishing 8th a few seasons ago. Last year they took on a financially doped behemoth and nearly David and Goliathed them despite being pretty much the youngest squad in the league.
Yes we want them to do better. Yes we want them to win the league. We have to earn that together. It’s not us against them.
Well said! We’re not playing the breath – taking football we played last season, that’s for sure.
So much waffle and excuses from Arteta. It’s very boring.
Some ppl got swayed by how good he speaks English!
Is this person still in charge? I told Josh I need him out ASAP
Is Josh your cat?
Winter discharges batteries.
He’s living in dreamland. He’s been found out and needs to be sent packing
5-0
Love the use of “mental block”. It earned me thousands of downvotes here.
Thought our last 2 PL London derby games were a given so going in to this one after a warm weather recharge where our opponents played out a cold away mid week FA cup defeat i would think 3 points all day, I’m 99% convinced we will turn Palace over by 3 goals yet that niggling 1% which i try to dismiss can see dodgy VAR decisions/red card/opponents keeper having a blinder, 11 men behind the ball all putting in a shift, a 0-0.. hopefully none of the above happens and we can kick start our season again, a few… Read more »
We need to pass more thruballs and ones over-the-top in our transition game … we do have the speed up front.
If things go awry, at least our midfielders are tighter to our defenders.
Player identity you say? Yes, you had one who fit the bill exactly and you benched him for no reason.
Oh and also buy a striker who can actually score goals. Not one who is silky and likes assists, not one who can only score against Shef Utd, an actual ‘I like to score goals and I do’ type of striker.