After we won the first of five Premier League matches this season, Mikel Arteta praised his players for showing courage against Newcastle United.
We won 1-0 thanks to Ebere Eze’s excellent goal after 10 minutes, which came from a short corner routine. Having netted a goal in a similar fashion on Tyneside back in September, we deployed the tactic again today, and saw the first couple of attempts not quite hit the mark.
But it was a case of third time lucky when Eze belted the ball past Nick Pope to ultimately win us a huge three points, and Mikel was delighted to see his players stick with the plan that helped move us back to the top of the table.
Reflecting on the result, he said: “Game one, done! We've been talking about that reset after Manchester, and do what is in our hands. We certainly approached the game the right way, started quite well, and scored a beautiful goal.
“We believed it was the right thing to do against the physicality and the way they have adapted to us in set-pieces to try something else. When we did it the first time, the crowd wasn't very sure about that, it didn't work out. So, the second time, do you have the courage to do the right thing? And the players did it, we did it. It didn't work out, he shot but it went off target.
“Then the big question is, do you have the courage to do it again? And the boys did it and I love that. When there’s so much at stake, when it's tense, when there is doubt and you make decisions, we believed it was the right thing to do and we got rewarded for that behaviour.”
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The goal was Ebere’s 10th in red and white as he moved onto double figures, while it was the 17th time we have scored from a corner this season in the top-flight, breaking the all-time Premier League record. Only two of them have been from short corners - both against Newcastle.
Mikel was quick to pass the praise onto his staff, including set-piece coach Nico Jover, for drawing up the plans, as well as the players for executing them to perfection, and now he’ll hope to have similar success when we face Atletico Madrid on Tuesday night as the big games keep on coming.
On the latest record to have been broken, the boss added: “That's credit to Nico and the staff that put so much effort and enthusiasm and passion into that. The players really believe that they can give us the margins to do that and the quality that we delivered today was great.
“I'm happy that we have a beautiful trip to Madrid to play the semi-final of the Champions League. It doesn't happen very often, so recover and we're going to start to talk about Atletico now and we'll go for it.”
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