Quotes

Arteta on White’s display, our pre-season and more

Mikel Arteta was understandably disappointed to be beaten by Tottenham on Sunday, but remains optimistic about the new Premier League season.

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

on the defeat…

To lose any game... to lose against them obviously even more. Take the positives and learn and for the next time be more prepared and better. We took a lot of good things. We played with a lot of kids as well who did extremely well today, so I think it's good for the preparation.

on Ben White’s performance...

Yeah, he was really good. But again, it's a match where they haven't played. Some of them they've [only] trained for four or five days. So you can still see and we didn't want to risk many more, but it was a good start.

on the pre-season campaign as a whole…

In terms of preparation, we have done everything we could. With all the difficulties we've had with this Covid world and surprises but I think we improved a lot as a team and we worked on a lot of things. In some moments in games we put them the way we wanted and in some others we've still made some errors that are costing us games.

on the importance of starting the season at Brentford with a win…

Yeah, it's always great to start [with a positive result]. It's a tough place and a team that's been playing together for a long time and the first game is always tricky and they are a really good opponent.