In an evening that saw us retain the top spot in our Europa League group, we came away with a hard-fought 1-0 win away at Bodo/Glimt.
In his post-match press conference Mikel Arteta was asked about the artificial pitch, ending Bodo/Glimt's unbeaten record, Matt Turner's improvements, and more.
Read on for a full transcript below.
on ending Bodo/Glimt’s impressive record in Europe…
Really happy to win here against a team that has won the last 14 games in European competitions in a row, so they deserve a lot credit to do that. There’s not many European teams that can do that, we have come here on 15 and won it. We have talked about this in the last few days that was the challenge, in different conditions, in different contexts, making a lot of changes, find a way to win, and we’ve done it.
on the overall performance tonight…
The second half obviously there are a lot of things to improve, we know that, I’m not going to get too deep into that, I understand as well, why this is happening. But I think the boys deserve credit as well for the way they tried. Quality-wise, in terms of dominance and how we want to play, obviously there are a lot of things to get better than what we done today, but it’s another win, move on, now it’s Leeds.
on Turner’s improvement with distribution…
He’s improving, he’s getting better, we are demanding things that are different to what other managers have demanded him to do. He was much better in the first half than the second half. In my opinion we can have more control, he was phenomenal in goal, the way he reads the situation, especially the defending the back of the central defenders, when he needs to control the space there, the way he set himself in the one on one situation he had, was really good.
on whether he is confident in Turner starting a Premier League game…
Yes.
on facing Bodo/Glimt’s as an opponent tonight…
Really tough, I said before we played at the emirates this is a really good team that is going to cause you problems, especially the moment you start to lose certain duels and allowed, especially the left-back to progress the play so easily and go through your press too easily, and once we haven’t controlled that, we were in big trouble, and that was probably the difference between the first and the second half. Obviously, the conditions, the pitch, is another element that you could see sometimes that it was too fast for us but there is no excuse.
on whether Martin Odegaard asked to start the game…
Well, verbally he didn’t ask me to play. But the way he was preparing the last few days for sure, he wanted to come here and play. It’s the contribution of everybody. So a lot of players, Reiss for example - he hasn’t played for three and a half months. The way he was trying to go with it. Every single player, the ones that they came from the bench - performing better or worse, attitude level (and) willingness to win…top.
on whether beating PSV next week will allow him to mix things up selection wise for the following fixture…
In Europe, when you have the opportunity to get there - take it. Because a lot of things happen that are very unpredictable. So we will prepare the game next week, obviously after Leeds, and try to win it.
on whether playing on an artificial pitch tonight made him worried about playing certain players…
You are, but it’s the squad we have. We had 16 players available. So I have to play 11, and I don’t want those 11 to play 90 minutes here, because I know probably what is going to happen in the next day or two. If they get injured here we should be talking about how we should not be risking a player, or risk (another) player. At the end, they have to play.
on whether he had to dig deeper than he wanted to, to get the win…
Well we knew that it was going to be really complicated. Again I repeat myself, that it’s 14 games that they have won consecutively here. So I think we have to play at a different level today. But the team selection was as well because of some other issues that we have with other players that they could not start today.
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
