Arteta – I love our mentality

Two goals deep, deep into injury-time gave us a memorable victory over Manchester United, with the Emirates roar in full effect again.

Just like last season, we bounced back after conceding the first goal to United to secure the points late on, but that doesn’t tell the whole story of an incredible, topsy-turvy game.

We had a penalty decision over-ruled by VAR, before Manchester United had a goal chalked off for a marginal offside after the video referee intervened again. We also missed presentable chances in both halves, but after the game Mikel Arteta said the ‘story ended in a beautiful way.’

“Thank you so much for the crowd and the players to be part of these moments because they are going to stick with us for a while,” he added. “It’s a big, big, big game with a lot of history, as we’ve said, and it was brilliant to end it in the way we did.

“I love the mentality of the team, the determination, the eagerness to win and go and go and go. We never give up. Obviously we gave them the first goal in a situation that we discussed. They kill you if you do that and we did, but we reacted straight away and I think, overall over the 100 minutes, the team was very dominant and deserved to win the game, but to be fair the margins with this team are so small and it could have gone in a different way.”

“It’s a huge boost you know (to win before the international break). It’s four games. We deserved to win the four games, that’s clear, but to be fair the margins that we have in the later stages of the games are not big enough for what the team is doing.

“That’s something that we have to improve because you notice a lot of anxiety and you have to wait for a magic moment at the end and we don’t want to rely on that with everything that we do throughout the game.”