Arteta reflects on Arsenals history with the FA Cup and is excited to make a beautiful journey
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00:00 Can we get a few injury latests?
00:14 He's progressing well. We have another training session tomorrow and I will evaluate whether
00:19 he's available or not to play and start the game. And the rest there is no news.
00:26 Thomas Partey hasn't gone to AFCON, can you tell me about the negotiations involved?
00:35 It was about common sense. He had a long-term injury, he's been trying to
00:40 push his rehab. He really wanted to be with his national team but obviously
00:45 it's still far from training with the team and it didn't make a lot of sense to be involved.
00:51 There's been talk after you lose two games about you being a bit light in defence,
00:58 call-backs. The situation with Jurgen, how does that come into your thinking when you're thinking
01:03 about defenders coming in?
01:07 Unfortunately, that's a very long-term injury. He's doing really well but he's still very far
01:15 from being fit to train with the team. That's something that has to compete with the team so
01:21 we don't expect him anytime soon. It's what we have, the situation we have now as well with Tommy
01:26 having to leave and we have to cope with that.
01:30 So a left-back coming in in January, even on loan, is something you're considering or not?
01:37 We are open for the transfer market but again the emphasis is on making the most out of the
01:44 players that we have. We will work together with the club to understand whether there are any
01:48 possibilities and we have any good options and first of all focus on the players that we have.
01:55 But it's equally as likely that you'll do no business at all?
01:59 That's a possibility.
02:00 Can I ask you about Riquero? The club have been in touch with the PGML about some of the tackles
02:11 and fouls on him. I imagine the club and the referees are in constant contact about all kinds
02:19 of issues. Is that just part of that or is it specific?
02:22 It's daily communication, weekly communication that we have about certain topics but nothing
02:26 specific about that one.
02:28 Is there a trend for referees to ignore some of the early tackles in the game? Is that a worry?
02:35 I think the referees know and they know the tactics of the opponent and they know that some
02:40 players are more targeted and as well the way they play. Obviously they invite more tackles but
02:45 I think they are well aware of that.
02:47 So it's not a specific request to the referees to go easy or get players to go easy on him?
02:55 No.
02:56 Are you surprised by the commentary that it's provoked?
03:00 I think that's been going on for two years. Obviously we have wingers that provoke a lot
03:07 of fouls and a lot of attention and that's something normal.
03:10 Liverpool, the FA Cup. You've won the FA Cup as a manager. Do you have a real
03:16 feeling for winning it? Do you want to win it again?
03:18 A real feeling. It was a great experience to win the first title the way we did it and
03:25 there's a big history between this competition and our club and we have a big opportunity to
03:32 start again and make a beautiful journey.
03:35 You spoke about the potential shortages in your squad for various reasons but obviously Mo Salah
03:40 won't be around for Liverpool because of AFCON. How much of a miss do you think he will be in
03:46 the FA Cup?
03:46 Yeah, both teams we are missing very important players and we knew that. We have to adapt to
03:52 that and still perform and win matches.
03:54 Can I ask you one? I've got you here. A bit off topic but it's very important.
03:58 You'll be wearing white at home on Sunday as part of the No More Red campaign,
04:04 the anti-knife crime campaign. How important is it to keep that campaign at the forefront?
04:09 I think it's a great initiative from the club. I think giving support and creating
04:14 a safer environment with the power and the capacity that we have to help people,
04:20 to transform certain areas of London as well. I think it's a campaign that started three years
04:25 ago and has helped a lot of people already and brought a lot of attention so we can make the
04:31 streets safer around our city, especially with people that we have kids, we will sleep better.
04:37 Is this the ideal tie for you or is this not the ideal tie for you? A team like Liverpool
04:48 to round the FA Cup after the two results you just had?
04:52 It's the draw. We played two weeks ago and it was an incredible match and I'm sure it will be
04:59 a really good match again.
05:00 What I'm trying to get out of there is, is it a match whereby you'd rather have this level
05:05 of opposition where your team have to bring their A-game or would you rather have a level
05:09 of opposition maybe not as high as Liverpool where maybe they wouldn't have needed to?
05:14 We don't have a choice. If you ask both teams, probably in the draw we were expecting something
05:18 different but we have this incredible clash in the first round and we have to go for it.
05:25 Reflecting back on the defeats to West Ham and Fulham, do you now know what went wrong?
05:30 Yes, I do. We weren't at the level, we weren't good enough. I don't think we deserved to lose
05:36 the match but we didn't do enough to win it. Are you worried that's going to continue into 2024?
05:42 Hopefully not because it was a one-off. I haven't seen the team
05:45 do what we did in certain periods of the matches so hopefully not.
05:50 Has it affected confidence and belief in any way?
05:53 It affects momentum. Until Christmas Day we were at the top of the league. Six days later
06:00 we were fourth. You can be very tempted to look at things with a microscope or take the telescope
06:07 and look a little bit further and have things with a little bit more perspective. My job,
06:12 big time, is to look with a telescope and have perspective and analyse things in a broader way
06:19 and not get affected by one performance. Not results, one performance.
06:24 Looking at the perspective, you love this competition. Do you think it's special?
06:30 It's a great competition. As I said before, we're very attached to the club and
06:35 the club has won it more times. We expect a great game and a good run.
06:44 You'll have VAR in the game. We saw VAR used to send off Dominic Calvert at the Palace.
06:49 There are a lot of games this weekend where there is no VAR. Unless
06:52 Thijs Bale are the Premier League ground, then there's no VAR.
06:56 Shouldn't the FA Cup, being the competition it is, have the same rules for everybody?
07:01 Ideally, yes. I would support that idea 100 per cent.
07:09 A lot was made of the Anfield atmosphere before the league game. Do you think the
07:13 Emirates can ever replicate that? It could ever be the same sort of place that can intimidate
07:18 opponents?
07:19 It will be our own one. We are really happy with the atmosphere that we have created at
07:25 the Emirates. It's been incredibly supportive. Can we tweak it and sometimes make it even more
07:30 hostile? I think we can. That's the next step in my opinion. We have to be so grateful for
07:37 what we are achieving and creating in our home ground. I think Sunday is going to be
07:43 a big one again.
07:44 How do you take that next step? How do you make it more hostile?
07:47 I think the team has to give more. I think the team has to transmit that bite, that aggression,
07:53 and that intimidation and dominance to the opponent. I think Celtan games this season
08:00 and Champions League games are going to create that next step. That's my feeling.
08:04 You obviously won this trophy in 2020. How important do you think that win was
08:10 on the journey that you've taken here in the last four years?
08:13 Yeah, winning always gives you more credit. It attaches you emotionally to people because
08:19 winning at the end creates a very special feeling and those moments are always really
08:26 important when you want to evolve relationships and when you have certain attachments to the
08:31 team and the players. I think that helps.
08:34 That win was a big deal for you though as a manager after your first trophy. Do you
08:38 think there was a chance that you might have lost your job in the difficult months that
08:42 followed and not had that trophy until the fallback time?
08:44 Bing! I don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. We won it for a reason. We deserve to win it.
08:51 We did it against big teams as well. Only that one after the Community Shield as well.
08:55 We are here for a reason.
08:58 I only ask because I don't know if you ever reflect on that being a really pivotal moment
09:02 for you.
09:03 Well, I think it helps as I said. But I don't know. After a month gone by, look what now.
09:07 You lose two matches and what is happening now? Six days ago we were top of the league,
09:14 which means we were the best team, the most consistent team in the Premier League.
09:17 Yeah, put things in perspective.
09:19 Mikel, you're supposed to have this mid-season break after Sunday's game.
09:26 If you have a replay, you won't have that break. How difficult is that for planning?
09:32 How frustrating? Is it something the calendar needs to be looked at?
09:34 Yeah, that break will be minimal. We have planned with both scenarios obviously because
09:42 there's a possibility always in football. We want to win the game. We will try to win the game.
09:47 But that has to be considered because it's there.
09:51 Are replays in the FA Cup something that needs to be looked at next season,
09:56 particularly when you've got expanded Champions League games?
09:58 Is it something that might come out of the calendar?
10:00 I think so. But we will see what happens because with the new format of the Champions League as
10:04 well there will be more games. So I don't know where we're going to fit them.
10:07 Can I just ask you as well about the goalkeeper we've seen in the Carabao Cup,
10:11 who played Aaron for the game. Is he going to play on Sunday?
10:14 We will see on Sunday. I cannot give you the line-up right now.
10:17 And lastly, on party, are we, for him, talking about there's still weeks to go or months to go?
10:22 Hopefully it's weeks. When he's going to determine and how many weeks, it will
10:29 depend on how the next step training with the team will take him. But he's progressing well.
10:37 Another one of your injured players, Javier Villarreal,
10:42 sort of asked how he's getting on in terms of his recovery.
10:44 He's doing well again. But again, it was a surgery that required
10:48 two different things to get resolved. The first signs are good. Obviously, it's still
10:54 a bit far from what we want him. But he needs to keep working and hopefully in the next few
11:00 weeks we can have him. In the summer there were some links to him leaving, particularly
11:09 in that last week at the window. I just wondered, how close was that? Was that ever a thing?
11:13 Did you ever have a conversation with him saying that he needs to stay?
11:15 It was never a part of our plans, no.
11:17 And going forward, I know you've wanted to give him more minutes this season.
11:21 Unfortunately, injuries have gotten in the way. Just as he was starting to build up,
11:23 he got that injury before. If he comes to you towards the end of the season and his minutes
11:29 haven't necessarily changed and he says, "I need to leave for the good of my career to go and get
11:32 minutes elsewhere." Will you accept that or will you just say to him, "Look, Arsenal's the best
11:37 place for you to continue development"?
11:40 This is a two-way conversation all the time with players. I love listening to understand
11:45 how they're feeling and what is the best thing or what they want to go. You really have to be
11:50 aligned with them and how they're feeling and they have to feel important. Obviously, this is still
11:55 the biggest part of the season to play now. We have to be patient and he will have his chances.
12:01 If a player more generally comes to you and says, "I want to leave to get more minutes,"
12:06 are you ever going to stand in their way or will you happily just say,
12:09 "If you don't want to be here, then that's fine"?
12:11 It depends on the situation in the squad. We want to help the players to fulfil their feelings,
12:17 but as well, they need to understand that they are in a team, in a squad that has been
12:21 assembled and planned with them in the squad. You don't always get what you want because maybe they
12:28 wanted something different six months ago. It was a new contract, it was another individual
12:34 target that they had, so it doesn't always go your way.
12:37 One of the subjects that you've spoken about in recent weeks has been execution in the final third.
12:47 I just wondered, as a coach, when it comes to the final pass or the finish, the shot,
12:55 is that a specific area where you feel like you have less control as a coach and there's
12:59 more responsibility with the individual and the player?
13:02 Well, I think overall the execution is in every part of the field, but when it comes to those
13:09 spaces, the timing and the definition of an action becomes trickier to coach and certainly
13:16 to replicate an action in the game. That's probably the hardest thing to replicate in
13:20 football. The timing, the behaviour of the opponent, the distance between the ball and
13:24 the feet of the opponent, the exact location of that shot, the position of the keeper,
13:28 the game state. It's very tricky, but it's something that we have to improve recently,
13:35 especially in the way that we have transformed those chances into goals.
13:39 Do you try to emulate that in training?
13:42 For sure. It's our job and the thing is that putting them in the most concrete and
13:50 reliable scenarios I think is going to help the players to do it better.
13:54 And in terms of that finishing, the guys like Saka and Martinelli,
13:58 the Martinelli guard, maybe they're not finishing at the level they were
14:01 previously, maybe last season. Do you think that's just a question of over time,
14:06 it will come back, it fluctuates naturally? Is it confidence? What do you put it down to?
14:11 Well, I think what they did last year is exception and to maintain those numbers,
14:15 we knew that it was going to be extremely difficult because it was a one-off,
14:18 and for us, one-off in the league. So we know that we need other resources and other kinds of
14:26 goals to maintain the levels that we want. Thanks.
14:30 Thank you.
14:30 - I'm so excited to meet you.