Mikel Arteta explains how Arsenal will react to Everton loss and title setback

05 February 2023 , 22:30

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Mikel Arteta explains how Arsenal will react to Everton loss and title setback

Mikel Arteta left his old Goodison stomping ground with regret that his Arsenal side failed to deliver what they’ve been offering all season.

But the defiant manager is adamant this is no crisis of confidence for his young team as they feel the full pressure of a title race with the might of Manchester City breathing down their necks.

Instead, he believes it was the warning of a speed bump on the road to glory. Speaking after Everton exposed the Gunners - creating better chances from open play, and dominating the emotional atmosphere of the contest - he said: "This is a difficult and challenging journey and there are going to be big stones in the middle and we have to overcome that."

Asked if he thought the pressure got to his side, he replied tersely. “I don’t think so, we’ve had a lot of games already this season like this. But here, we didn’t control the energy they were going to have (from the crowd).”

Perhaps showing his own growing composure as an emerging manager, Arteta was calm and confident that his team will learn from a contest where they were sucked into a totally different style of contest, by the atmosphere and Everton’s energy.

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“We’re going to stay together. The best way to react is to understand who we are and how we got into this position. We struggled to control their direct type of game, and get back to the game we want to play.

Mikel Arteta will rally his players and go again (Getty Images)

“Do those things right, manage the game better, do it better individually and collectively and we earn the right to win games. That is what we will do.”

If it is any consolation to Arsenal and their supporters, Everton goalscoring hero James Tarkowski insisted this is a very different Gunners, and it wasn’t simply a story of their collapse against a certain type of football.

“I think this is a different Arsenal from the one I've played against for the last few years. These are the best team in the league at the minute, they've been flying but today was about us. We had to earn it, and we did.”

David Maddock