Mikel Arteta has compared Arsenal’s disappointing run of results to an onion and is confident his side’s “phenomenal” mid-season break can reignite their title challenge.
Successive defeats against West Ham and Fulham at the end of last year have seen Arsenal slip to fourth, and last season’s runners-up have won only one of their past seven matches in all competitions. Arteta’s side face a Crystal Palace team similarly out of form on Saturday after a week in Dubai that the Arsenal manager believes has helped to “recharge the batteries” of his players.
Although Arteta was positive about Arsenal’s chances of overhauling Liverpool’s five-point gap at the top given that the statistics show they are creating more opportunities than their rivals, the Spaniard admitted that he and his staff had been scratching their heads to find a way of improving the most important stat of all: scoring goals.
“You look at all the data and it is Arsenal, Arsenal, Arsenal at the top, at the top, at the top,” Arteta said. “The reality is that we haven’t won enough matches. There is something underneath that: it is like an onion, the first layer, second layer … we have to go to the bottom of it to understand actually what is making us win or lose.
“It is the small details, the margins, and then the boxes have played a big part of that. We have to change that. As a coach, you think: ‘Yeah, do that and that’s what will happen …’ It’s not. We have to find something else to win.”
The Premier League’s spending restrictions mean that appears unlikely to come in the transfer market despite Arsenal’s long-term interest in Brentford’s Ivan Toney, who returns on Saturday after his eight-month ban for gambling and is a more realistic target for the summer. It was perhaps telling that Arteta refused to answer when asked which position he could sign a player in if money were no object, insisting: “I love the players that we have.” But the manager did reveal Arsenal had been taking what he described as a “holistic approach” to improve their finishing, which included allowing the players to bring their families to Dubai to share “togetherness and moments”.
“They are part of us,” Arteta said. “They live with us. Maybe they are not in the building every day but they live our professional lives, our success and failures every day. They need to be recognised. They need to be present and for me it’s part of the best moments that we had. We always try to take a holistic approach and look at every aspect that can be affecting the players in a positive or negative way.”
Arteta played down interest from West Ham in taking Emile Smith Rowe on loan and was upbeat about Jurrien Timber’s chances of featuring again this season after the £34m summer signing stepped up his rehabilitation in Dubai.
“There is a possibility but at the moment he’s still very far from competing,” he said. “That’s the realistic picture of it. Are we hopeful that he could have a realistic impact before the end of the season? If everything goes well, it looks like that might happen. At the moment though it’s too early to make that call.’
