Every word from Mikel Arteta's post-Palace presser

Following our emphatic 5-0 win against Crystal Palace, Mikel Arteta headed to the Emirates Stadium press room to discuss the game with the media.

He was asked about our set-piece prowess, injuries, goals being shared around the team and the quality of them, as well as many other topics.

Here is everything he had to say:

on having success with set-pieces today:
It’s very important. The reality is we worked set-pieces less in the last week than all other aspects of the game. This is the beauty of it, we worked on a lot of things that happened and we trained them a lot. I'm really pleased with the clean sheet, which is something we have been missing to win more games, the amount of goals scored, and sharing those goals as well which I think is going to make a really good impact on the team.

on why Declan Rice was taken off:
He was feeling some tiredness. I don’t know exactly what muscle it was but when he says that at 3-0 obviously we don’t want to take any risks, and the same with big Gabi as well. He had some discomfort, he had a tackle in the first half and was a bit struggling so it was the right moment to take them off.

on converting the chance we created after the two set-piece goals:
Having the ability to score from many different ways - especially when you attack a low block team like this - to score in a certain way everything has to be nailed absolutely perfectly. When you generate things that are a bit more chaotic, sometimes it opens teams up and is more difficult to do that. Today I think we exploited that really well because Palace had to change their behaviour and that allowed us spaces to exploit

on whether he wants more goals from our central defenders:
Absolutely and [Gabriel's] got the ability and timing. Deliveries have been consistent and good as well, there are others like Wilo that have the capacity to score more goals. We don’t have a 30, 40 goals on someone, we have to share them and that’s a good quality in the team.

on the free-flowing football that led to the third goal:
The whole action, reading the space, the behaviour of the front players to open them up and then the individual action of Gabby to play the ball at the right time and right pace in front of the defender and Leo, it’s what Leo does. He’s so composed in the box, the closer he gets to the goal, the calmer he is and I think the decision-making and execution was top.

on the confidence that Martinelli will get from scoring a brace:
I think that is going to make him really good. Sometimes when you are in that period, and he had a little issue in the last few days in training so he wasn’t fully, fully fit, that changes momentum, it changes perception, it re-energises you. It’s everything.

on whether he has spoken to George Graham after the match who was famous for his set-piece goals:
[Laughing] No I haven’t had the chance to do that yet.

on the plan now before our next game in 10 days:
Resting and looking after some players. At the moment we are really short in numbers, so we really have to manage a few players, especially players that have played a lot of football. We have good training blocks, one to train really hard and other ones to use for game preparation, so we’re going to have to try to maximise that space.