Mikel Arteta admitted the team was not at its best in the 1-0 win over West Ham at Emirates Stadium but was delighted with the way his players dug in to earn a valuable three points.
Arteta spoke to the media after the game and gave his opinion on the performance, the VAR intervention and extending our unbeaten run in the Premier League.
On the win…
I don’t believe a lot in fortune, we had the moments of luck that we needed, but as well it was because we had some really good individual performances at the back. Sometimes to clear the ball and sometimes to make a save. I’m really happy with the result because big teams find a way when they don’t have the best day. It’s obvious that it wasn’t our best day in terms of performance, but they find a way to win it. You can build from there, you can learn and take the positives and the negatives in a much better way. The unity, the solidarity, and desire the players are showing, in the end it pays a price, and today we didn’t pay a price. A few days ago we played Olympiacos here but it did today and football is like this.
On VAR…
When the goal was disallowed I thought ‘okay that’s fine’. Then my staff came from the bench and said ‘it’s a goal’. But then after two or three minutes, I don’t know how long, then I wasn’t very positive about the outcome. I am very pleased with the VAR tonight.
On the first-half performance…
We had moments, obviously in the first half when teams are so compact and defend with that deep block – we gave a lot of simple balls away in dangerous areas, where we allowed the opposition to generate transition moments which they are good at. After that, it was a free-kick and after that, it was a corner, so we struggled a little bit to find our flow, and when we did it a little bit in the final third, we lacked the final pass, the right pass and as well the desire to be more aggressive and finish more actions in the final third.
On our unbeaten league run…
It’s only turning a corner in terms of results. A little bit in terms of the things I want to see from my team, but they were telling me now that ‘I’ve turned the ship around’, that ship still has to turn a few times more to see what we want to see. It’s part of the process, it doesn’t happen overnight, we are positive that we can keep going on this from the eight or nine weeks that we’ve been here. It will be down to the performances that we put in and it will be related to the results.
