Mikel Arteta talked about managing the strain of playing across multiple competitions.
**Arsenal**are awaiting the Carabao Cup final against Man City, must take control of the Round of 16 Champions League tie against Bayer Leverkusen after a 1-1 first leg draw, and can take one more step to the Premier League crown with a win over Everton. They are also into the quarterfinals of the FA Cup, and the message has remained taking challenges one step a time until the end of May.
“Every result, every performance shifts momentum, the emotional state of the team and the fact that we managed to draw the game at the end, obviously it was a lift, because in any case we deserved for sure to lose that game. So yeah, I’m moving to the next one, we have no time.
*“The moment we finished that game, we had time to watch one or two games in the Champions League, some good games and then back to business.*
“If you’re in our seat from competition to competition, we play across seven days in three different competitions. That drags you from one to another, the urgency to get prepared, to translate the messages you want, to make the right decisions and to make sure that we arrive into any game in the best possible way, it’s enough, and the rest is a consequence of that process and how well we do it.
“We come from five games in very short periods of time again and you just have to go game by game understanding who can play a certain amount of minutes, who doesn't. Maybe for the next game you have an idea of what you can do, but two or three games away is quite difficult at the moment.
“I think at some stage we had four away from home in a row, some very difficult games as well. But that's the calendar, that's the beauty of it as well. Obviously at home we have been very, very strong and using that in the right way can be the deciding factor.
“Every game that you win now is a massive step towards the objective. And tomorrow, as you said, we have a very difficult one. We're going to have to earn it. If we do earn it, we're going to be closer.
*“We will have to wait and see and speak to the doctors on whether [**Leandro Trossard**and **Martin Odegaard*] are involved or not."