Mikel Arteta
Mikel Arteta believes Arsenal have to train themselves to be relentless in the title race after surging five points clear at the top of the Premier League.
Wednesday’s comfortable 4-0 win over Everton at the Emirates Stadium extended their lead over Manchester City with 13 games each left to play.
Bukayo Saka opened the scoring and Gabriel Martinelli struck twice either side of Martin Odegaard’s goal as the Gunners turned what threatened to be a tense evening into a routine stroll.
The Gunners have now won all three matches since losing to City a fortnight ago, and Arteta was asked how Arsenal can be “relentless” in maintaining a winning run to stay ahead of their closest rivals in the run-in.
“It is something that we have to train, discuss and build,” Arteta said. “It is not easy. But a lot of the time it happens through experiences and most of the time it is experiences that you don’t want to go through.
“The calendar, the fixtures [are] going to give you that. Sometimes you are here, sometimes you are three points, two points, minus two, it is going to happen and we have to deal with that.”
Despite struggling at the start of the match against an Everton side motivated by the threat of relegation and coached by a new manager in Sean Dyche, Arteta was ultimately thrilled with how the game played out on Wednesday.
“I am delighted with the win and the way we played after the first 25 minutes. We had some difficulties at the start,” Arteta said. “Once we scored the first goal, the game unlocked. We needed a magic moment and Bukayo produced that. After that we grew and deserved to win the game.
“We played really well in the second half and could have scored more.”
Arsenal, who have not won the Premier League since 2003-04, host Bournemouth on Saturday before travelling to Portugal for the first leg of their Europa League round-of-16 tie against Sporting CP.