Tribal Football

Arsenal boss Arteta on Haaland; pride over Man City draw

Arsenal boss Arteta on Haaland; pride over Man City draw
Arsenal boss Arteta on Haaland; pride over Man City drawAction Plus
Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta says he and his players have recovered from Sunday's 2-2 draw at Manchester City.

The Gunners host Bolton Wanderers in the Carabao Cup tomorrow night.

Advertisement
Advertisement

Arteta said, "Yes, fully recovered.

"It was a very emotional game at the end. They all are in different ways from the one we played on Sunday probably. But yeah, looking forward to tomorrow."

On his final whistle confrontation with Erling Haaland, he said: "It’s part of football, part of sport. After the game, all that goes away and we move on. That’s it."

He continued: "Well, we had to play the game that we had to play. The first 10, 15 minutes, we couldn’t with 11vs11. Then we got much better. Then we were thrown in a very different context and did what every team does. They played 30 seconds with 10 men. Look what they did for 30 seconds. It’s normal what they did. We had to do it in a different way.

"We learnt from the past. Unfortunately we’ve been in the same situation a few times. We were in that same situation with Granit (Xhaka) after 38 minutes and we lost 5-0. We’d better learn. If not I would be thick, very thick."

On the point and the performance, he added: "Extremely proud. I think the desire that the team has to compete in any context and to adapt to different ways of playing and handle that emotionally and physically, is superb. Happy? No. But understanding how difficult that context is and what we had to deal with and as well with the players we had out, it was a significant improvement. But not happy because we want to win."