Mikel Arteta has challenged his squad to turn the frustration of losing to Bournemouth in Saturday into a positive when we travel to France next week.
We take on Paris Saint-Germain in the second leg of our Champions League semi-final on Wednesday night, and the manager believes the extra fire in the players’ bellies can help us turn round the tie.
Speaking after our 2-1 defeat to Bournemouth at the weekend, Arteta said: “We really wanted to create a very different vibe, atmosphere, and energy to go to Paris.
“But we certainly created a lot of frustration, anger, disappointment, and it's the time now to show our courage, our resilience, and go there using everything that we're feeling right now to put an amazing performance there and win the game and be in the final.
“That fire in your belly now has to be there, and it's time to step up in Paris and have an amazing match and win it.”
The manager pulled no punches when summing up the defeat to Bournemouth – just our fourth in the Premier League this season.
“We're disappointed with the result, especially after the way we started,” he said.
“We scored the first goal, and after that we had four or five really big opportunities to kill the game, and we didn't take them. And on top of that, we defended the goals really poorly for both set-pieces and against any team in the Premier League, it's difficult. Especially against a team like Bournemouth, they are really good at that. They're going to punish you, and they did punish us.
“After that, the game became very chaotic for us, to really earn the right to come back.”
Now though, attention switches immediately back to the Champions League, and we remain potentially 90 minutes away from booking our place in the final in Munich.
The boss said: “In the Champions League you have to do something special at some point in the competition to earn the right to be in the final, and it's this game. It's in front of us, with that feeling that we have right now, let's do it.”
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