Mikel Arteta sat down in front of the media at Emirates Stadium for his post-Ipswich Town press conference on Friday night.
He reflected on our 1-0 win, shared fresh team news and more.
Here's what he had to say on the following subjects.
on the overall performance:
I'm very happy with the victory, with the clean sheet, and with big parts of the game. It's a really difficult opposition. We're playing so many games. You see that teams are winning for very small margins. Today we could have done the margins much bigger. At the end we didn't. But we held our nerves in the last few minutes, you know, to defend well in the areas that we had to do, and I'm very, very happy.
on whether the team should have scored more:
More, more. And today we had some big openings as well in the second half when we were a little bit more stretched, they were a little bit more aggressive. The big header of Gabi as well, one yard. So we should have scored more, but, it's the consistency. The team conceded nothing, again. Their defensive behaviour was, again, outstanding. So that’s something that’s always going to give us always the chance to win games.
on any further news on Bukayo Saka:
I would prefer to leave that to the doctor himself. But he had a procedure. Everything went well. But, unfortunately he will be out for many, many weeks.
on Raheem Sterling’s fitness:
Yes, the news with Raz, I think it's better. We have to see this week how he evolves. But we expect it, the knee injury to probably take longer than actually the way the knee is evolving in the last few days. So, hopefully that's good because we need him.
on Gabriel Martinelli playing on the right:
As I said, I think the replacement of B is going to be the team, you know, and that unit in particular and having minutes together and asking different things and doing that. There was moments that it flowed really well. There were moments that we can still have some work to do there and improve it and adapt to the qualities of the individuals. And I'm certain that we're going to do that.
on whether tonight was a more satisfying result than Palace:
In terms of how well we control the position, 10 times, because we conceded 14 or 15 shots against Palace. And it's nothing that we normally do. So overall, I think this one was much better. But, it's about the goals as well, and the beauty of it, and entertaining people, and that one probably was better for them.
on the timeline of Saka’s absence:
I said many weeks, so I think it will be more than two months. I don't know exactly how much longer, I think it will depend, you know. How the scar tissue starts to heal the first week or so. The mobility of that. Let's see. It's very difficult to say.
on how our defensive shape will change with players missing:
Well, it's always important because as well with Bukayo that doesn't mean that we're going to score three or four goals every game. So we have to rely on the team. That's the biggest strength of us. We never rely on an individual scoring 25, 30 goals and we have managed to be very, very competitive still and we're going to manage to do that.
on what Martinelli needs to succeed on the right:
Gabby needs people around him. He needs constant threat. He needs to be always in the last line when the ball is on his side, that he has relationships there, and people close to him because he's very intuitive. He's always a threat. I think that if you're isolating too much, you're going to suffer, especially playing with a natural foot on the right and that's things that we can evolve and improve.
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