Following Arsenal’s 1-1 draw against Manchester United, Mikel Arteta spoke about the game at length with the journalists inside Old Trafford’s press room. He spoke about the game, dropping points, the title race and much more.
Here is a full transcript:on his feeling after the game:
It’s frustrating not to win the game with everything we did, especially in the first half, the first 43-44 minutes, how we dominated every aspect of the game, full control. We lacked a little bit in the final 15-20 metres, to have more shots, more purpose, more direction, the last pass, the last action, but the game is clearly for us and in the direction that we wanted. Unfortunately, one long ball and we didn’t manage that ball well, we give it away, created a foul in a really dangerous area where you have to rely on them not take advantage of the individual quality and that’s a really bad bet against Manchester United. They capitalised on that and in the second half, we tried to generate the momentum, we scored a goal and my feeling was that they were really struggling. They couldn’t get out and I feel like they didn’t have the legs to do that, we opened the door for them to maybe win the game. We gave some very unusual balls away and very basic things were done really poorly. Even thought we had three big chances, the reality is that David saved us and at the end, we could have lost the game.
On dropping points in the last three league matches:
Today the efficiency we had in the last 20 metres, it wasn’t good enough, we know that. Those are big parts of a lot of things that the game demands when you come to Old Trafford and what we did was superb, but at the end, you have to capitalise on that when the team is so dominant and much better than the opposition and today we didn’t. Then you have to overturn a result, which we know is very difficult to do here. You have to expose yourself a little bit more because you have to take more risks and then the game could have gone their way in the last few minutes.on the free-kick being moved slightly:They just mentioned that. If Bruno has done that, football is for streetsmart players and he’s done that and capitalised on it, he’s more clever than us and the referee.on if it should have counted:I don’t know but he’s done it, it was a goal, so they took advantage of that. Football is for clever people.
On having players like Gabriel Martinelli back:
We have to rely on what we can do better with the players that we already have, and we have to be consistent because we did so well four days ago. It’s about doing it again and again what we did last week. It doesn’t matter, I’m very positive that with the ones that we have, we can do better in terms of what we produce in the final third.
