Arsenal kept up their Premier League title bid on Saturday with a 2-0 win at struggling Leicester City, with substitute Mikel Merino scoring two late goals after coming on up front.
Mikel Arteta believes Arsenal can stay the course in the title race – because they can still score from anywhere.
Despite a glut of injuries to his front players and his mix ’n’ match approach to plugging those gaps, somehow the Gunners still keep coming up roses.
The Spaniard admitted that it was a roll of the dice as much as informed opinion that prompted him to throw on Mikel Merino in the dying stages with the Euro 2024 winner netting twice to down Leicester on Saturday.
But it paid off – and Arsenal’s chief was happy because it quietened a lot of the ‘noise’ surrounding his club following the injury to Kai Havertz that followed knocks to Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus.
He said: “We needed to show how much we wanted it – that regardless of what happens, we’re really going for it.
“We believe in the resources we have and the quality of our players. That we can still adapt and be competitive and win a lot of matches. We can still score. It can be a set piece. It can be in various ways.
The team has a lot of capacity in open spaces where we are dangerous as well. We had the ability to run – that’s what we needed. We’re a threat from every situation.”
The same can’t be said for Leicester, for whom Ruud van Nistelrooy might need to dust off his boots.
Five home games in the Premier League without a goal and Leicester City’s need is pressing.
Never mind that they blunted title-chasing Arsenal for large chunks of this; their own deficiencies in front of goal need to be rectified if they are to stay up. The Foxes haven’t found the net in the league since Bobby de Cordova-Reid scored during injury-time against Brighton at the start of December.
The Dutchman was right in his assertion that the industry was there – but he is already starting to sound like his words are on a loop.
He said: “We keep going. We know we have players who can score. We’ve proved that. In the end, if we produce the games we’re playing, eventually, we’ll score goals. That’s no issue.
“The disappointment and frustration is that you don’t take anything from the game. And we put in everything we had. Not only the physical effort but how we defended and attacked together. I can’t expect any more from this team.
“Eventually, it will pay off because they deserve more than this.”
