Mikel Arteta reflected on the double defeat against **Bournemouth**before **Arsenal**face the Cherries.
Last season, Andoni Iraola got the better of his fellow Basque in both Premier League fixtures, earning a 2-0 victory at the Vitality Stadium in October and a 2-1 win at the Emirates Stadium at the start of May. The Gunners, sitting four points clear at the top of the table, will want the new year to continue where the last one finished, and they have lessons to learn from that pair of setbacks.
*“[The mood] was very good after the game against a really top opposition, again to perform and to win in the manner that we did, great. Now we focus on Bournemouth, we know how tough it’s going to be tomorrow, and everybody is going to be at it.*
“They were two very different games. A game that, until the 30th minute when William Saliba gets sent off, it was a different game we managed. We had some chances, but we manage to lose the game.
“Our home display, at the beginning, it was very dominant and that ended up in a really poor way for us. So, a lot to learn, huge respect for them. I know Andoni really well and what he’s doing, I think it's incredible. I'm watching all the games that they played this season and against the top sides, how difficult they made it and how they haven’t got results against them as well is difficult to understand.
*“We know how important it is to maintain your 11 players on the pitch as much as possible, and we failed to do that last year. We lost both games against [**Bournemouth*] and we know the difficulty of that. We know how good a team they are, how they can threaten you from every angle, so we know the difficulty of the game tomorrow.”