After seeing his players put four goals past Bayer Leverkusen, Mikel Arteta believes they’ve taken another leap towards being prepared for the visit of Wolves next Saturday.
A convincing win was recorded against a side who lost just once in 53 games last term, and Mikel feels that as well as the collective display to score so many goals and play some scintillating football, he was delighted that many individuals put in top-class displays to show they’re ready for the Premier League kick-off.
Reflecting on the win, Mikel said: “I’m very pleased, obviously with the result because it’s what we want, but especially with the performance against a really strong side with really good players who are extremely well coached. They gave us problems, but we found so many good solutions, so it was a real test today.
“Not only we as a team, but individually I think we raised another level today. I think there are so many players that played in some really good moments. We made a lot of changes and struggled in the second half with organisation when we made those changes, but it was great to see our academy players again playing for the first team and playing with the personality that they did. There were a lot of positives.
“The commitment that we showed, the determination, the attitude to play our game and to respect certain things that they were doing that they wouldn’t have restricted us to something that we do normally, and to be able to adapt to that. Then where we had opportunities to be ourselves and be very clinical. I think we did that really well.”
Sunday sees Lyon in north London for the Emirates Cup, and the boss was thrilled that we managed to put on a show for 60,000 Gooners on our first outing back on home turf.
He wants to see more of the same this weekend in our final friendly before the real business begins in nine days.
“I think it was a full house again so it’s great to be back,” Mikel added. “I could feel that the players were really desperate after being in the US to play at home.
“On Sunday, we’ve got another one, and hopefully we are going to get the best support in the last game before we start the season. We’re excited.”
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