Mikel Arteta praised his players for their reaction as they ended their three-match losing streak in an emphatic 5-0 win over Crystal Palace.
Arsenal had lost Premier League fixtures against West Ham United and Fulham and their FA Cup third-round match against Liverpool before heading to Dubai for warm-weather training.
And even though they had suffered a setback in recent weeks, Arteta said he could sense something brewing amongst his players while they were away.
“The positivity we had right from the beginning,” Arteta said after the match. “I had a really good feeling in the last 10 days about the team and how they reacted.
“They are great players, we have a great team and today they really wanted it. I could feel that. It was a win with a clean sheet and we scored five goals which we really needed.
“We opened the game up the way we did [with the early goal] which is really helpful as it means the opponent has to be more aggressive which allows more spaces. We exploited that really well.”
Both of Arsenal’s first-half goals came from corners, with Gabriel scoring both. The Gunners’ manager explained how set-pieces is a part of their goal to be more dominant as a team.
“We work on everything and we want to dominate every phase of play. We want to be the best team in the world so you have to be the best in everything. We can still do better so we will continue to work on everything that can make us better.
“It’s got a huge impact – we’ve seen that as well in recent games that we’ve lost when we’ve conceded set-pieces, so the outcome is very different when you don’t concede and score.”
Arsenal have scored the most set-pieces this season in the competition, finding the net 13 times so far.
Update on Rice and Gabriel
The only downside to the victory against Palace was two potential injuries to Gabriel and Declan Rice as Arteta gave an update on both players.
“He [Rice] was feeling some tiredness. I don’t know exactly what muscle it was but when he says that at 3-0 obviously we don’t want to take any risks, and the same with big Gabi as well. He had some discomfort, he had a tackle in the first half and was a bit struggling so it was the right moment to take them off.”
Arsenal’s next match is 10 days away, when they travel to Nottingham Forest on January 30, giving Arteta time to rest his players.
“[We are planning on] resting and looking after some players. At the moment we are really short in numbers, so we really have to manage a few players, especially players that have played a lot of football. We have good training blocks, one to train really hard and other ones to use for game preparation, so we’re going to have to try to maximise that space.”
