After seeing his team clinch a 12th win from 13 this campaign, Mikel Arteta feels that our 1-0 success over Crystal Palace was the most important so far.
Ebere Eze’s improvised volley was the difference between the teams at Emirates Stadium, helping stretch our lead at the top of the Premier League table to four points and clinch a seventh victory in a row as we continue to progress well on three fronts.
We’ve also picked up maximum points in our last four league outings, whereas last season we collected just two from the corresponding matches against Newcastle United, West Ham United, Fulham and now the Eagles, and Mikel feels it is another sign of the growth of our squad.
“I'm really happy with this one,” he said post-match. “I just said to the boys that it was probably the biggest victory that we had this season - the way I was feeling it today, it was about making another step.
“We’d played three teams that last season we lost points against and Palace was another one, and they are in a really good moment. I knew we had to be very patient and not get frustrated, because it was very difficult to open them up. They do that to every team, and the moment that you lose certain concentration and get frustrated, they start to open up and they are lethal in counter-attacks, in open spaces and on set pieces.
“So I'm very glad that the team showed that maturity, we found a way to score a brilliant goal through Ebs and keep another clean sheet.
“I think the mindset has been exceptional. The level of aggression that we're playing with, how we insist and how we keep going and going and going, we are ruthless at that. In the end, we're going to get rewarded; we have so much quality. We rely on our habits and when those are really, really high, it makes things very difficult for the opponent.”
Once again we ended the game having kept our opponent scoreless, and have now recorded five clean sheets on the bounce and already hit double figures for 2025/26.
The latest against Palace was achieved despite William Saliba going off at half-time and replaced by Cristhian Mosquera who again impressed in our backline, and Piero Hincapie being thrown into the fire for his home debut, but he helped steer us over the line to collect three hard-fought points.
Mikel is thrilled that no matter who he selects in our backline, they’re slotting in and keeping the standards as high as possible.
“When you look at the results, the type of games, the way goals have been scored, how difficult it is to break opponents down and to kill every source that they have to generate chances against you, it makes me really proud,” he smiled.
“For Mosq, big credit for him because he's played, I think, only one year in La Liga, he comes to a new league with huge demands and immediately he's having the impact that he's having.
“It’s great to have Piero on the pitch as well. You could sense immediately his aggression, his commitment in every action that he does. I think the crowd is going to love him, and [credit to] the rest of the boys that had to come in to win the game.”
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