My Arsenal Blog

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta knows and understands this game, and one of the biggest things to understand with a club like Arsenal is that you simply cannot afford to go on a bad run of form for too long – or it could spell trouble. In their upcoming clash against Chelsea tonight, there’s a very good chance that their top four hopes could be all but finished – and we aren’t even out of January yet.  .......Read more here.....

On whether he thinks we should have had a penalty:
I think it’s very clear.

On whether he’s spoken to the referee about it:
No.

On Gabriel Martinelli stepping up:
Absolutely. He’s an 18-year-old kid with all the enthusiasm but as well, he’s so brave to make decisions, to threaten the opponent every time. He’s all the time in the middle of the goal, waiting for an opportunity to come. The fact he hasn’t played 90 minutes for a while – since his injury – but is still in the way he went about every single action is impressive.  .......Read more here.....

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta spoke with the media in a game that felt very ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ as the Gunners drew 1-1 with Sheffield United. They had the lead for a long time before the Blades were able to bite back with an equaliser, and it was clear to see and hear the disappointment from Arteta as the attention now turns towards the Chelsea clash.

On how frustrating the result is:
I’m very disappointed today. I think the performance deserved three points and I think we lost two points. In the Premier League, if you don’t put the game to bed then in the last 10 or 15 minutes this type of team just need a long ball, a second ball, a set-piece, and you can give the points away. That’s it.  .......Read more here.....

“I managed to try to block it out a little bit. I was not that active on social media and  wasn’t reading comments, I wasn’t too concerned about social media, I just wanted to go back on the pitch and give everything because I knew that in this moment I was not playing the football I know I could play.

I was just talking with the closest people around me like my family, my parents, my wife, my kids, and this helped me to forget about everything. In the morning when I was coming to training, I would just focus on the training and then go back home to spend time with my family. I tried not to read too much stuff that people were saying.  .......Read more here.....

There has been an awful lot of speculation as to whether or not Shkodran Mustafi is going to be leaving Arsenal any time soon. However, there hasn’t really been all too much talk about Mustafi – the man himself, and how he’s doing. He’s had to deal with a great deal of abuse online over the last year or so, and in this feature, he talks about that and so much more.

“We’re only human and we can’t switch off our brains, it’s always going to be there. Once you’ve read criticism – good or bad – it’s going to stay there.  .......Read more here.....

Eddie Nketiah spent the first half of the 2019/20 season on loan at Leeds United, but Arsenal were obviously unhappy with the way things were going with the young forward over there, as Leeds boss Marcelo Bielsa admitted himself. He made a total of 17 Championship appearances but only two of those were from the start, coupled with another two starts in the Carabao Cup where he scored on both occasions. In total, he bagged five goals in four starts, but Bielsa obviously wasn’t going to give him what a player at his age needs to develop – regular game-time, which was supposed to be the whole point of the loan.  .......Read more here.....

On what the team will miss most about not having Auba involved:
Auba has been around, he was very sad after the game. He was disappointed that he left the team with 10 men. It’s an action that is completely accidental in my opinion. He’s been superb under me, he’s trained really well, he’s working so hard. He’s scoring goals and has probably been the most important player on the team. So to lose him, obviously, is really bad news for us.  .......Read more here.....

We’ve already spoken about how big this upcoming Sheffield United game is and the implications that may come with it, and we’ve done that because the Blades are currently one of the frontrunners to claim sixth spot – and, at the very least, that’s the sort of position that Arsenal needs to be occupying.

Prior to the game, Gunners boss Mikel Arteta spoke with the media about everything from Sheffield United to the January transfer window and beyond.  .......Read more here.....

Let’s take a short look at what has been going on in the last day or two that involves Arsenal.

Aubameyang red card appeal denied

As you probably know, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was sent off in the 1-1 draw away to Crystal Palace on Saturday as VAR overruled the initial decision of referee Paul Tierney and turned his yellow card into red for a rather reckless tackle on Max Meyer which forced the Palace winger out of the game. In case you still haven’t seen it, or you want to take another look to make up your mind about it, you can do so here.  .......Read more here.....

In an interview with Spanish journalist Guillem Balague, Unai Emery spoke about the things that went wrong in the final months of his reign as the Arsenal head coach.

Emery was sacked at the end of November, following a string of poor results which culminated with the 2-1 home defeat at the hands of Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League. Former Arsenal midfielder Freddie Ljungberg took over on a temporary basis, before the club eventually appointed Mikel Arteta.  .......Read more here.....