Quotes

Arteta on... the defeat, pre-season, Smith Rowe

Mikel Arteta was philosophical after our defeat to Hibernian at Easter Road on Tuesday night.

Our manager spoke to Arsenal Media after the game, and this is what he told us:

on the performance...

Well I'm always disappointed when we lose a football match but it is the first game, we played with many kids and we only had four training sessions. We've trained really hard and you could see that the players were a little bit leggy. I think we conceded the first goal, an accident, and the second goal was clearly offside. We created many, many chances but we didn't score. That's what pre-season is for, to take the things that we haven't done well into a training session and then improve.

on whether the lack of training so far explains the performance...

It does but there's no excuse because we want to come here and win the match. They worked really hard, the boys worked really hard and you could see that some of them were not in the best condition, but we're still very early in pre-season. It was great to see some of the young lads making their debuts here. We'll keep working.

 

on Emile Smith Rowe's goal...

He knows that it is a part of the game he needs to get better at. We are working on it a lot and you could see the positions that he took today. He created two or three big chances.

 

on facing Rangers next...

It's a very good game for me especially because I played there and it is a really special place. I'm looking forward to that game.