Mikel Arteta faced the media following the disappointing defeat to Newcastle United in the League Cup semi-final. Arsenal denied the chance of another trophy and will now be focusing solely on the UEFA Champions League and Premier League title chase.
Speaking after the clash, Arteta was asked for an update on the injury suffered by Gabriel Martinelli and made reference to the upcoming trip to Dubai. He discussed the performance but gave a rather predictable answer when asked about the talent on show from Alexander Isak.
You can read every word from the press conference which football.london was in attendance for here.
Can we just get your thoughts on the performance?
We had so many expectations, obviously, to believe that we could turn it around, we needed to generate momentum, especially in the first half. The game started in the first action almost with them scoring and then the goal being denied. Then we had the moment, two big moments, with Martin, we didn’t capitalise the next action, they scored the goal and obviously, the game shifted. Then, you need to stay cool, to score a goal as early as possible. We didn’t manage to do that in the first half even though we had another big chance. In the second half then we started to struggle as the game went by and we didn’t generate enough situations, establish ourselves in the final third enough. The game started to get away from us.
Are Newcastle now one of your toughest opponents in English football now?
Yes, he’s a tough opponent, yes.
You mentioned that Odegaard chance, it did feel like that had gone in and the score had been 2-1, it could have been a very different game. Has it shown how fine margins are for us on this team?
Yes, when you want to be in the cup finals, you want to win trophies, at the end those are hard. They’ve been really effective in the box in the last two games that we’ve played against them and we haven’t. Overall, that was the main difference. It’s true that today we’ve been a bit more unsettled, especially when the game became more chaotic or when they were very direct with their play. Normally we are much more composed, today we lacked a bit of that and the game went away from us.
Can I just ask for an update on Gabriel Martinelli, who came off in the first half?
Yes, he felt something, I think it was his hamstring and he wasn’t comfortable to continue so we’ll have to do an MRI scan tomorrow to see the extent of the injury.
I think that’s 11 games in 36 days, you’ve had now since the start of this year. Was tonight partly just exhaustion from up here and how important is the break that you’ve got now that the chance to go away?
I wouldn’t like, especially when we lose a game, because physically we were tired. We played so many games, we played so many games every three days and we knew that that was going to be a really high-intensity one. I think emotionally as well it was a very different game and we needed to get there, to believe right at the end that we could do it and before we expected it, the game got away from us.
How much does it feel like an opportunity missed to get to a cup final?
When you get to the semi-final and not the final, very much.
Two trophies left to play for now, how much going out here will be done with your efforts and increase the desire to finish the season successfully?
Yes, we need to swallow this one, it’s a tough one. We had a lot of expectations, we knew the difficulty of the task because of the result that we brought from London but there’s nothing we can do right now. What we could do is, we were on the pitch a few minutes ago, now we have to look forward. First of all, I think this is going to be a painful one and while we are in Dubai, recharge and then go again because we have still a lot to play.
Did you lose this in the first leg?
We made it really difficult, certainly for ourselves.
Defensively your team today were quite uncharacteristically sloppy in some moments and some mistakes that we don’t usually see from them. As a manager, what do you put that down to?
The errors are part of football, we’ve been super consistent, we’ve been really composed and today we gave them hope just by putting the ball long into our last line. When we did that, we always looked vulnerable because we allowed them to run from this situation and they are really a dangerous team when they are able to do that. Certainly, they don’t want to do that, so what can I say?
Were you a bit surprised by how Newcastle set up with the five defenders and Fabian pushing on?
No.
From the first leg, Alexander Isak, obviously the performance there and tonight. What kind of task was that for Saliba and the team?
I’m not here to evaluate opposition players but it’s clear that he had two actions to finish and you know what happened.
