Mikel Arteta admits that seeing us lose the Carabao Cup final to Manchester City is a “painful” defeat to take, but is determined to use it as fuel to drive us to bigger things this season.
We fell to just a fourth defeat in our 50th game of the campaign at Wembley as Nico O’Reilly scored twice to win the trophy for the Citizens, and deny us the opportunity to see our name engraved on it for the first time since 1993.
But with us still fighting hard to land a first Premier League title since the Invincibles 22 years ago, and in the last eight of the Champions League and FA Cup, the boss is determined not to let this setback derail our incredible campaign so far.
“It’s hard because everyone as a player really wanted it today and I know the supporters wanted it. The fact that we haven’t managed to deliver it is very, very painful.
“We’ve had a remarkable eight months together, and now there’s an international break. We all go into there with a very hard feeling and pain, and we’re going to use that as fuel for the next two months.
“We keep going. It’s painful not to give them what they are hoping for and what they are cheering for, but we’ll recover from that and go again.”
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Highlights: Arsenal 0-2 Manchester City
We had gone into half-time in a strong position, after Kai Havertz and Bukayo Saka had gone close but found James Trafford in good form, but after the break during a period of pressure, City found a way to take the lead when O’Reilly nodded in from close range, and four minutes later he popped up with a second to take the game away from us.
Mikel feels that the disappointment of losing a final hurts a bit more given the context of the game, but felt that we needed to capitalise when we were in strong positions, especially in a Wembley final.
“We are all feeling extremely sad, especially with the way the game went,” he said. “In the first half I think we were the better team, had the best two chances and certainly the best chance of the game to capitalise and get the momentum you need in a final.
“In the second half we started to have certain issues to get out of that block, but credit to them as well, how composed they were in certain moments and us, with the ball we have to do much better than we’ve done. Without them having any shots, the first one, it’s a very unusual goal that we’ve conceded, and the second shot they’ve had all game, they scored the second and then the game becomes very tough.
“You can have momentum, but if nothing happens, that momentum will shift at some point. And it was probably in the worst moment when that happened and that’s it, you have to take it. Sometimes you have to accept that the opposition was good in that moment. They capitalised and that’s what you have to do if you want to win titles.”
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Every word: Arteta’s post-League Cup final presser
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