Press conference

'Now we have the tools we need to compete'

Bernd Leno
Bernd Leno

It was a hugely busy summer for the club in the transfer market, and Mikel Arteta is confident that he now has the tools needed to compete.

We made six first-team signings, bringing in the likes of Ben White, Martin Odegaard and Aaron Ramsdale to boost our squad and our manager is delighted with the work that has been done.

 

"We have a completely different squad with the number of changes that you just mentioned," Arteta said. "You can tell that is unheard of.

 

"Now we have the tools that we believe are going to give us the best opportunity to compete in the way we want to compete and build what we want to build in this project and now we have to make it work. We have to build it together, we need to create relationships, chemistry, understanding. We have to adapt and we have to do that really quickly.

 

"The amount of changes in two years is almost 30 players. Edu explained it like I tried to explain it. We have all participated, trying to create and build this project, led by the owners, and it is a project we believe in, that we have to assemble because it is the only option that we believe was best for the future of the club.

 

"We all take responsibility because we have all been involved in the decisions and we have to make it work. The complexity in football is that you want to build a medium to long-term project with immediate results and we have to embrace that, because there is no other way in football and you are going to have to get results and we are ready to do that."