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.”
Reassuring words from the boss. Mikel motivates me. And I’m just sat on my couch eating Pringles, not getting ready to play in the San Siro.
Agreed. This team would have won 2 championships in any normal era where rules were followed.
He’s right
4-1 Sporting. An elite hate watch.
No point in feeling despondent, We’ve come through blips before, as Miki says we are now at a level where we can compete with any team, we haven’t been near our best this season so tomorrow would be the perfect time to get a decent performance and a result, helps also the refereeing in the CL is way better than what we have in PL, we can do this, keep the faith..
Liverpool looking very strong. And Real getting schooled too!
Liverpool are reaping the rewards for an easy fixture list. Having a good start builds confidence and that is worth a lot.
CL shall be set as an objective and explained to the players. They shouldn’t go to a game thinking it is a nice to win when we reach the quarterfinal stage.
Different resources as Inter spent only 6.5 million on the transfer market this summer.
This night I had a dream that Arteta moves to Nottingham and takes Sterling with him.
Lay off the cheese………….
It’s time to get back on track. It’s time start winning again. It’s time to play good football again. It’s time to look like a team capable of winning the title.
Whatever the score tonight we need a great performance to send out a message.
Why would anyone downvote Fats on this one?
Habit.
lol.
Let’s Make Arsenal Great Again??
Exactly!😛
BTW: I’m so glad I’m not an American! You yanks have got 4 insane years coming up!
In England we just don’t get the DT thing!
Make Eddie Nketia great again!
In England, you lot don’t get a lot of things.
Thought downvotes were because of alliterations with “make…again” but got the answer from his comment below.
……………Raya
Timber…Salibs…Gabi…MLS
…………….Jorgi
………..Partey….Merino
Saka…………Kai……..Jesus