Arteta suggests Arsenal missed 3 starters against Spurs

Mikel Arteta has suggested Arsenal were missing three players he’d planned to start against Tottenham Hotspur, even though they secured the win anyway.

Arsenal took all three points from the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for the third time in a row on Sunday, but they had a bit more of a fight on their hands on this occasion after some bad news pre-match.

Speaking after the game, Mikel Arteta suggested his initial plan for the match faced three different setbacks.

“I looked at Spurs for four or five days,” Arteta began. “I had a super clear plan, how to do it. I prepared everything, the session, the meeting, etc., and then one news, we lose a player.

“Another news, we lose another player. Another news, we lose a player.

“So I had to completely change it. I liked the plan for the players that we had available, so it was a great challenge.”

Two of the three players Arteta was likely planning around were Declan Rice and Martin Odegaard.

Rice found himself suspended for the match after his red card against Brighton, whilst Odegaard picked up an injury over the international break, so both were ruled out relatively late on in Arteta’s preparations.

As for the third player, we can only speculate. Perhaps it was Oleksandr Zinchenko, ruled out on the day of the game. Or maybe Riccardo Calafiori, who suffered an injury setback on international duty. Thankfully, Jurrien Timber filled in very well at left-back.

Maybe Arteta was even preparing for this match before he knew Mikel Merino wouldn’t be available for it, with the midfielder’s injury only confirmed days before the Brighton fixture.

The encouraging thing was the response from Arsenal to all of those setbacks.

“With all the bad news, the team got hungrier and hungrier to play the game,” Arteta said, adding: “It’s a tough week that’s coming up, and instead of finding any little excuses or arguments to do that – the opposite.

“Face the challenge, play with courage, acknowledge our qualities and what we have to be able to do to win a game, and we’ve actually done it.”