After claiming the 2023 Community Shield in dramatic circumstances, Mikel Arteta was whisked into the Wembley Stadium press room to tackle questions from the gathered journalist.
Leandro Trossard’s late equaliser against Manchester City was followed by a penalty shootout success, and the boss was delighted that we managed to find a way to claim our 17th success in the competition.
Here is everything he said in his post-match press conference:
on the importance of the win:
It feels great. I don’t think it gets much better than winning a trophy in Wembley against the best team in the world, and to do it the way we’ve done it. It’s really encouraging, I think we had some great moments in the game, especially in the first half with three massive chances but unfortunately when you don’t put them away, you know what can happen.
We had a little error in midfield and didn’t clear the ball, and the next second the ball is in the back of the net and the game is very difficult to play, but I think we made the right choices. The changes helped the formation, and we kept some belief and momentum and that allowed us to win the game with the goal and then the penalties.
on Aaron Ramsdale saying that we have proved we can beat Man City when it matters:
Well I don’t have to agree or disagree. At the end it’s what the players feel and they are convinced they can beat any team. That’s the challenge especially with the maturity and how often they play finals, but today I think we showed a resilience and a determination to fight and deserved to win the game.
on how important it is to have something tangible to hold onto going into the season:
It’s great, that’s why we are here - to win trophies for this football club and make it successful. Just the joy of seeing so many happy and proud people and the connection again doing it for our supporters in Wembley feels very different, and that’s great.
on Havertz doing everything but score a goal:
Yes I think so. He was superb, the way he pressed and how intelligent he is to try and understand certain spaces and the timing of it, he was great and got in great positions to score. He was unlucky not to score but he was very physical when he needed to be, so I was very pleased with him.
on Ramsdale's performance:
He was great and we practised penalties a lot on purpose in pre-season to be ready for this just in case. We went through disappointments against Manchester United where we didn't stop any of that, and that was the learning curve that sometimes it's needed to get the right result and I think he was superb.
on expectations on us this season:
I don't know [if this result will raise expectations too high]. I just wanted to grab that trophy as quickly as possible and then we can think about the next, but we know it's football, you win a trophy today, but tomorrow you have to be training, you have to prepare for the Nottingham Forest game in the right way. It will be a very different game to this, a very difficult one as well and we know that we have to go day-by-day. This is great, it lifts us, the spirit, the belief and everything, we just want to play better and win games. That's what we have to do.
on the new touchline rules this season:
I just said: 'listen, I cannot change my behaviour in three days.' It's a very difficult thing to do. We try our best, I try my best, I understand the rules, I understand where they are coming from, but we can get frustrated because sometimes we don't understand what part of the technical area we are in, but it's fine, we will adapt.
on new regulations about increased added time:
At the end, it's about effective time. I think it's really good to do that, because it was going too far I think and now teams are going to have to think twice. Now we have to be prepared to play 100 minutes because it's going to happen every single week.
on if Ramsdale’s been feeling pressure due to transfer speculation:
I hope not, because the competition here always exists whoever it is and that's what he has to feel like. If we don't feel like this, we are not going to get the best out of each player, so we better feel like this and make sure that we all feel like this, me first.
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