Every word from Mikel Arteta’s pre-Fulham presser | Press conference | News
Mikel Arteta has been speaking with the press ahead of our clash against Fulham in the Premier League at Emirates Stadium.
We face the Cottagers in N5, looking for a chance to extend our lead at the top of the table ahead of Manchester City’s trip to Everton.
You can read everything Mikel said below, with a vide of the full press conference to follow!
on if everyone is ok after the semi-final:
I think so, so let’s see how everybody is tomorrow morning. Obviously, we haven’t been able to train much, so tomorrow we’ll have the final update.
on Odegaard, Timber and Havertz:
Yes, Kai and Jurrien will be out.
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is Odegaard:
Let’s see.
on his emotions after Wednesday:
Focus on Fulham, and hunger. Hunger to play, hunger to compete, hunger to win, hunger to be closer to achieving our dream.
on the overturned penalty against Atletico:
I don’t know, I haven’t spoken to them in the last few hours, so I don’t know. We will deal with that on Monday, now it’s Fulham.
on using Wednesday as fuel for the run-in:
I think we have enough fuel in the tank; we’re playing to win the Premier League, and it’s exactly where we want to be. Four games to go, it’s game two, I’m ready to go.
on if there’s a siege mentality in the squad:
We certainly have that, and we need to face any context, any situation to achieve our goal. What happened the other night was extremely disappointing, and we need to make it happen at home now.
on what he sees in his players:
Hunger, hunger to win, that’s it. To compete, to prepare and to achieve the goal that we set at the start of the season.
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on his message to supporters:
Let’s keep doing what we’ve done all season and bring that energy, that passion and together we’re going to make it happen.
on if it’s a test of nerve before the end of the season:
It’s a lot of factors, that’s something that emotionally, for sure, we have to manage in the right way. But I would put the emphasis more on showing that desire, that determination, that hunger, that will that we’ve shown all season and even more because we have only four games to play now and everything is at stake so it doesn’t get better than that.
on scoring goals in the first 15 minutes of the second half:
The first thought is that we try to prepare and understand what happened in the first half and try to apply it immediately in the second half. There will be a lot of factors I’m sure to get those stats and it’s very positive, but what we want is throughout every 15-minute block of the game to have the ability to do that.
on Fulham’s season so far:
Marco (Silva) is doing a remarkable job. I’ve said it many times, in my opinion, he is one of the best managers in the league. The way he sets up his teams, what he’s done for the club, it’s incredible. We know how tough it’s going to be tomorrow.
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on carrying the ball forward:
Penetration is one of the words we use the most, and taking players’ initiative and making things happen. Through the passes, obviously, it’s extremely difficult against a team that is so organised, so we need to find other ways and that’s the kind of thing we’re looking forward to.
on Kai Havertz’s season:
He’s been a huge miss – we’re talking about one of the most important attacking players we have, and he’s been out for seven or eight months. Unfortunately, he’s not been the only one with long-term injuries and players who have been missed. The team has shown an incredible capacity to overcome these kinds of scenarios and still be very, very competitive.
on his future:
The focus right now has to be on availability and performance, and Kai is desperate to be on the pitch as quickly as possible. Hopefully for Atletico, he will be available, and he’s pushing every boundary to achieve that.
on not being able to train much between games:
First of all, (it’s about) recovery and clarity on what we have to do, what we expect from the opponent and especially what we have to do to take the game where we want it, to then win it. When you don’t have much time on the pitch, you have to do it in other ways, other methods, a lot of collective messages and especially a lot of individual meetings to achieve what we want on the pitch.
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on Rice dropping deeper:
Every opponent has its things, and we believe that in the last game, that was the best way to hurt them: find spaces, find time and surprise them with certain movements. In relation to the opponent, we can change that, and having the variability and options to do so with our midfielders, I think, is something positive for the team.
on how impressed he is by Rice’s form:
What we need are players who can occupy any position on the field. Modern football is going in that direction. When you’re a midfielder, you’re a midfielder – not a six, eight or 10. If we want a total team, we’d better have total players to do that, to be comfortable and dominant in any area of the pitch, to dominate every phase of play. Declan is certainly evolving in that direction.
on Rice being in contention for Player of the Season:
What Declan is doing again is incredible. To play the amount of games, minutes with the quality that he’s shown in every game is something extremely difficult to do, and he’s doing it, not only this season, but the last few seasons that he’s been with us, and to show that level of consistency is extremely rare because the demands and the standards are very, very high.
on if Eze’s freedom on the pitch is one of his best qualities:
I think so. I think it’s part of his character and he has a unique way of expressing himself. Inside, none of us knows how he’s feeling, but what he actually transmits to the world outside is such security, calmness and composure in every situation on the field.
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on if he transmits that to his teammates:
He does, and especially the way he talks and connects with people, it’s very much like that. I think that’s something special. I think we need players like that, we need players that can have a different kind of presence on the pitch and body language, and Ebs brings something else that I think is unique and very powerful for the team.
on the difference between this match and our game against Bournemouth:
The time of the game is going to be different to start with, and hopefully the game and the result will be very different, especially when the game turned and how efficient they were with certain actions. We know the difficulty of the opponent, of the schedule. But I sense it in the team, we want it that much that tomorrow we’re going to be fresh again and ready to go.
on learning from short turnarounds between games:
I want to think about all the turnarounds we’ve had that were so difficult that we won. But we can learn from the positive ones, from the other ones. We want to win every single game, which is very difficult to do. We have prepared the best possible way since the moment that the final whistle went at Atletico, we’ve done everything that we possibly can to give ourselves the best chance to recover, to bring the right energy, to prepare the game in the right way, and now it’s about the selection and performing on the pitch.
on if the Premier League should help with the fixture congestion:
Ideally, yes. We know that, if they can do that, that would be great.
on if the players feel any nerves from the crowd:
That’s a question for the players. I’m extremely grateful for the support, the atmosphere that we have created at Emirates. We always want more, we always want better, we always want every single action to be so positive behind the players. The more we do that, we all know that the outcome is going to be much better, and I’m sure, I know tomorrow is going to be such a special game when there’s so much to play. So we know everybody has to be at it.
on if he feels any nerves:
I think that’s part of my job as well, because I know what we are trying to do. I put the right example the other day when we played the short corners as well. We are so convinced of what we have to do and let the players make the decision, especially when they are on the ball. When we are defending and to push them and to do that, I think it’s great. When they have the ball, we need to allow them to make their decision, because probably, they’re going to take the right one most of the times because they’re so good.
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