Tough games, red cards, injuries, shaky form, and now the departure of key figure Edu – it hasn’t been the smoothest start to Arsenal’s 24/25 campaign, particularly with heightened expectations following two promising title challenges.
Nevertheless, ahead of Wednesday’s clash with Inter Milan, manager Mikel Arteta remains focused on the positives, emphasising that the Gunners are in a strong position after years of hard work.
“With everything that we’ve been through here in four or five years, what a great place we are in because we’ve been with problems of all kinds,” he told the press in Italy on Tuesday.
“We are in an incredible moment and we are blessed to be where we are. We’re going to play this competition, we’re going to play 70 games, we’re going to have injuries, we’re going to have defeats like many other teams and it shows where we are and then how good we’re going to be to react and be ourselves and tomorrow come here to win again.”
He also had this message for the fans: “In moments when you have a defeat or two or certain news that nobody expects, like we’ve always done we stick together with positive energy and move forward.
“This is part of football and we have to be very strong and that’s what we’ve done. We’ve come a long way with that, so stick together.”
Inter come into the match sitting second in Serie A and with strong European credentials, having reached the final two seasons ago and the round of 16 last season.
While Arsenal have a history of notable wins at the San Siro against both Inter and AC Milan, this promises to be a challenging encounter, particularly as it falls between tough away games at Newcastle and Chelsea.
“They have a really clear idea and identity and that for me is the biggest strength of Inter and that’s full credit to the manager,” said Arteta of Simone Inzaghi’s outfit.
“He has some very specific ideas, especially in ball possession, the way he moves the position of certain players to occupy different spaces and this makes it tricky and unpredictable. But to be fair, we face in the Premier League a lot of tactical issues that we have to resolve and hopefully tomorrow we’re going to do that as well.”
He added: “It’s certainly a privilege to be here and I’m fully prepared for the game that we’re going to have to play against the opposition we’re going to be facing. I love the culture, I love languages, and different ways to communicate with the world, especially with our players and staff.
“We see ourselves as well as a very strong team that can compete with anybody and it’s time to show tomorrow that we are at our level and we can come here and beat them.”
4-1 Sporting. An elite hate watch.