Mikel Arteta says he loved the celebrations after Arsenal’s 3-1 win over Liverpool on Sunday and had no idea his staff and players were being criticised in the media until his press team briefed him before this afternoon’s press conference.
On Sky Sports, pundit Jamie Carragher scoffed at Martin Odegaard’s decision to borrow the camera of club photographer Stuart MacFarlane while the likes of Chris Sutton and Richard Keys aired their own grievances on BBC radio and beIN SPORTS.
While it’s not the first time the ‘celebration police’ have knocked on Arsenal’s door, it’s clear Arteta pays little attention to the nonsense said and written about enjoying life’s better moments, pointing to peers who do the same.
Asked if he was surprised by the media furore, he said: “No, because they told me today. I didn’t know anything about it. But I love it – I’ve seen [away] managers at the Emirates on their knees, on the pitch.
“I’ve seen very big managers walking onto the pitch, I’ve seen managers going across the touchline. I’ve seen that all in the Premier League.
“Personally, I love it because it brings such passion and emotion to the game. When it’s done in a natural and unique way, I think it’s great. It’s my opinion and a lot of people may have something very different to mine.”
He added: “I see a lot of games and in game three, game six, game eight, there are managers and teams celebrating a lot, fans celebrating a lot. It’s so tough to win in this league.
“For sure, it was a big match for us. You can tell how much it meant from the [first] whistle. You could sense the stadium and the atmosphere very different already. It was a great day.”
He also had warm words for the way club captain Odegaard took it upon himself to include MacFarlane in the post-game jamboree.
“That’s something that happened because there’s a relationship – they do it every day here at the training ground.
“But people are entitled to have their opinion. When you do something publicly, there are going to be opinions.
“Some of them are positive, some of them not so positive. That’s our job, to accept all of that and still behave in what you think is the right way to behave and make sure we don’t lose that.”
His answer as to whether or not Arsenal are unfairly treated in the media was also an interesting insight into his personality.
“I don’t agree with that. In my life, what I have heard in the past five days, it’s all positive. So do you want to hear more the negative part, or the very positive part?
“I think there has been a lot of positiveness, and maybe a little criticism, if you focus there, you only see that. It depends on your perspective.
“It was an extremely positive reaction from our people, from media, staff, others managers, I got so many texts. When I’m walking in the street it’s pride and a lot of compliments for what we did, so I don’t have that impression at all.”
Arsenal head to the London Stadium on Sunday to face West Ham. Rumours the club will award themselves a replica Premier League trophy should they win are thought to be wide of the mark.
Arghh… for fark’s sake!
I think this is a very modern and important way to look at the noise in the current era of football. Players are bombarded with this stuff everyday. It is too much to ignore and way to much to engage with. Acknowledge, put in context, and move on.
I’m the replica supplier and I can confirm the order has been received and the product dispatched to the Emirates stadium. Thanks for your custom.
“Hey you lot there who just won a game of football, yes you, don’t enjoy it!”
– Some Cunt
haha I wish I could like this 100 times.
Last sentence had me laughing out loud.
I think it is just pure jealousy, and you can barely see anything positive in another person if you are jealous of him/her. Many of the pundits criticizing Arsenal and Arteta are players of clubs we have had great rivalry with. So what do you expect from them. In addition, many of them would love to be in Arteta’s position today but they have not the quality to do that. Many of them have been sacked from multiple small clubs. So seeing a young coach like them managing a big club like Arsenal and doing well is just too painful… Read more »
don’t blame the pig, blame those who feed it. pundits are paid to be controversial and arouse people. they are also their own brand: they know the more stupid their opinions, the more attention they’re going to have, and in their line of work attention is what brings you power and money. so it’s only natural for them to be dropping nonsense all the time: if i was paid 2 million a year for saying stupid things i’d gladly do it. people reacting to it and acknowledging those opinions as valid are the problem. instead of laughing it off they… Read more »
A couple of bitter pundits spout this shit because the wrong team won (and also carrying on the media led agenda). Nobodies like Sutton then pick up on this and are like, hey let’s make a talk show all about this because it will increase engagement from the lowest IQ people in Britain and irate Arsenal fans. Unfortunately for them, very few Arsenal fans were irate…they simply laughed at the patheticness of it all. Only morons supporting rival clubs chimed in with their worthless views, creating an echo chamber of runny shite.
I asked around and after a while someone who knew who Chris Sutton is told me he used to play for Norwich. No wonder he’s angry with those who get to celebrate winning games.
Love it, pay no attention to the bull$hit.
it’s truly amazing how important pundits are in the uk. we played a hell of a match and suddenly because a random knob didn’t like how we celebrated, everybody is talking about morals and celebrations and not a single word is said about our performance. why do people care so much about what jamie c*rr*gher says? and why can’t arsenal fans stop fueling that feedback? football aside, it’s very interesting how a single person can have so much influence on what people talk about, and that that person is as unremarkable as the one mentioned above. it’s not like that… Read more »
Here in Sweden it’s Bojan. A Man U flop who shoots his mouth off every week but gets mostly ignored. I think he’s the only one though. The rest of them are a mix of dull but professional with a reasonable level of knowledge.
Mikel is a classy guy. Very diplomatic and just seems to focus on all the good stuff. He could easily have thrown a mini tantrum about press treatment etc, but just glides straight past it. Nice.
Mikel is very smart and understands that those complaining want engagement over celebrating and not how we dominated Liverpool. He will only talk about how we beat them, anything else is just noise.
I’m thankful Jamie just criticized us instead of spitting on any of our fans.
When Klopp did his 3 pump in front of his fans at Emirates after their cup win the only thing i was gutted about was that we lost and they deserved to celebrate like any other team be it home or away, the same “anyone would think you won the world cup” bullshit was levelled at us last season from a lot of the surly scum from Middlesex delighting in our failure not to win the PL, who cares what they say about us..
Who really cares what pundits say, its our club and we can celebrate how we want to, such a non story, another celebration coming up v Bubble ham utd
OK due to being skint and not being able to afford to go to games my only option is to be an armchair supporter paying my subscription to Sky & the awful TNT to watch my team, when the game is over its over, apart from Miki’s post match assessment i really couldn’t give a fck what drivel pundits say after a game, we can celebrate like any other team as much as we want after a victory, shit show again by sky, the last one showing a few supporters leaving early before final whistle,
For every goal we score let’s do an ironic minute of silence.
Just imagined a dead silent stadium after we score – bar the enormous exhalation from noses when everybody is fighting not to laugh 😂
”The media are enjoying it, the majority of the media are enjoying it, they’re enjoying us getting all this stick, because nothing normally comes out of Highbury, right? And they’re enjoying it. Again lads, there’s only one way to handle it. Just keep on winning matches. They’re looking at us and the stick we’ve been getting over the past couple of weeks, right, it seems fashionable to jump on the bandwagon and get at the Arsenal. It’s fashionable. But we’re not second bottom. We’re second top.And that’s where we’re sitting – we’re second top of the league. And that’s the… Read more »