Mikel Arteta spoke to TNT Sports after today’s 1-1 draw with Everton. Here’s what the boss had to say.
On the performance …
Well, especially with the result, very unhappy. Very tough place to come. I think that it’s very physical, very direct. If you don’t deal with that constantly well, you never get any momentum, so it’s very difficult. We went ahead to finally find more control and try to generate more chances, but the start of the second half was very poor, we immediately gave the ball away.
We were just insecure what we did, and then the decision of the penalty comes. And it’s for me never a penalty, but we will take it from there.
Frustration at the timing of the penalty …
Yeah, really bad because the game just started in the second half. You want to generate now a certain momentum, especially going ahead because they need to start to be much more aggressive. And we never got to do that because the game became really different.
Was the game more physical than he wanted?
It’s always like this and that’s a big strength of theirs. You have to deal with that. You want to dominate the game and win it and play the game. You have to deal with that like with many other teams in the Premier League.
What did Arsenal do well?
Well, in certain moments, we dealt with that [their physicality] really well.
We had some very big transitions that we didn’t finish quite well, apart from the goal. And in many moments, I mean, they didn’t generate anything at all. So it’s very disappointing that from not generating anything, we just conceded a goal.
11 draws, is that too many?
It really is. You have to win many more games, especially when there is a team that constantly is winning.
Was it important to get minutes into players ahead of Real Madrid?
Yeah, that’s all good, but we wanted the three points. You want to get everything in the way you plan it. We did a lot of good things in the game. We managed to give minutes to a lot of players as well and rest some players, but we dropped two points.
