Mikel Arteta is looking forward to putting our unbeaten domestic record in 2024 on the line when we head to Aston Villa - at a venue he believes is one of the toughest to get a victory at.
During their charge to the Champions League last term, the Villans beat us home and away to account for 40% of all our league losses in 2023/24, including a 1-0 success at Villa Park last December on our last visit.
However, we return unbeaten in our last nine away games, winning eight. Impressively, we haven’t trailed for a single minute in any of those games, and could go 10 successive away matches in the competition without falling behind for the first time. But with last season in mind, Mikel knows there’s a long way to go until that becomes a reality as he goes head-to-head with his fellow Basque boss and inspiration, Unai Emery.
“It’s one of the toughest places to go for sure,” he said in his pre-match press conference. “We know that, we’ve prepared really well to understand what we have to do to go there and win the game.
“They dominate every aspect of the game, when you give them space to run they are phenomenal, when there is no space and they have to find it they can do that. In any restarts or set-pieces, they are at it, and that’s why they did what they did.
“They scored and we didn’t, it’s very simple. In two games we had an enormous amount of chances to do that, and that was the big difference. There were other details for sure which we have analysed, and we will have to do better tomorrow because they are a really good side with a good coach.
“What Unai [Emery] and Julen [Lopategui] did for us [Basque managers] was set the standard so high, they won a lot. The way they coach their teams, the way they represented their clubs was at the highest level, and that gave a platform for the younger ones like myself, like Xabi [Alonso], like Andoni [Iraola] to earn that curiosity that there are coaches from here, so we need to be grateful to those two.”
Since that single-goal loss in Birmingham just before Christmas, we have travelled to Anfield, Etihad Stadium, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Old Trafford without tasting defeat.
No team has performed better on the road when combining the past two seasons, and we have kept 21 away clean sheets in that time, more than the four previous campaigns combined.
Taking all that into account, Mikel feels that a much-more confident side are heading to Villa Park this time around, who have been bolstered by their experiences on their travels during the year so far.
On the belief garnered from this run, he said: “[It proves] that we’ve done it, that’s the confidence. Now we have to show it again.
“Tomorrow we go there with that belief and being very clear in what we want to do and what we have to do to earn the right to win the game, and we will certainly try to do that tomorrow.”
The other difference between our last visit and now is that Mikel was forced to watch the game from the stands after picking up a ban for accumulating three yellow cards, and he is glad he’ll be back on the touchline this time round as he pits his wits against Emery.
Looking back on that experience, he added: “I didn’t enjoy it one bit. It was too far. The moment that I love the most during the week, you are just building everything to get to that moment, be on the grass next to the players and the competition. Being there was frustrating. When you make a mistake, you think ‘I should have.’”
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