In the second half of his pre-Brighton press conference (and before all this evening’s transfer drama), Mikel Arteta went into more detail on Mikel Merino’s injury situation, Aaron Ramsdale’s Arsenal impact and the importance of getting good fees for players deemed surplus to requirements.
Here’s what he had to say…
On youngsters coming through the ranks changing Arsenal’s plans in the transfer market…
No, obviously we are creating a squad and building a squad that has to create the space for that talent to emerge and have the roles that they deserve. They are earning that right, certainly. Obviously, the gap is so big from where they were playing to play with the first team in the competitions and the demands that we have right now. But so far they are filling that gap and they are doing really well.
On whether he wakes up with excitement on deadline day…
The first thing I do is check the phone and say, Edu, no news. So far maybe good news and that’s it and then let’s see what happens.
On Merino’s arm injury and how upset he is…
He had the incident and he carried on playing and training. And at some point, we’re looking and it doesn’t look right. So that tells you how much he wanted it. He didn’t want to accept that that was happening in that moment. But actually, it’s what happened. And let’s use the time that we have right now to make sure that he’s familiar with everything that we do, how we live, what we expect of him, the team dynamics. He will be in every meeting, so we’ll use that time in the best possible way and, hopefully, in a few weeks he will be ready.
On Ben White not being in Lee Carsley’s England squad and whether he’s spoken to him about it…
No, not recently. That’s totally his decision.
On Ramsdale’s time at Arsenal…
I have really positive memories from the player that we signed, the excitement that he brought, what he actually did in a very short period of time. He earned the respect and love of everybody at the club and externally. He was part of the national team and he helped us to earn some success. Now we have to make a decision, it was the best for the three parties, we’ve done it and we have to move on. This is football.
On recouping big money from players who aren’t playing regularly; Nketiah, Smith Rowe, Ramsdale…
Yes. There are a lot of decisions behind the scenes, a lot of decisions that the club, the board, Edu and the coaches have to do. And then the players, you have to develop them, you have to give them the right time and they have increased their value, which means that they have improved as players and they have a lot of interest from a lot of the clubs. That’s something positive, that at least if we cannot continue with them or they want to find a different journey in their careers, we have the ability to financially use that capacity to keep improving the squad.
On who Merino collided with in training…
With a player. Gabi. If I say Gabi, it’s Gabi already.
On it being difficult to do transfers this summer…
Yes, because there were a lot of moving pieces and timing was very tricky to manage. But we were really lucky because the players that we wanted to sign, they waited for us, they said no to other options that they had and we managed to bring them in. That was crucial, I think.
On having money in the bank to make transfers they want to do in future windows…
I don’t know how much money is in the bank. We just try to obviously explain what we need, what we want to accomplish, what we want and the club every time they want to try to facilitate what we are looking for when we try to explain the right reasons to it.
On it being even more disappointing to lose a brand-new player to injury…
Well, it is very disappointing because you can feel the pain of the player as well. We fought so hard for three months to get the player over the line and the club has made a huge effort to bring him in and on day one for that to happen, it’s a huge blow. But his reaction has been exceptional, straight away. We signed him for many years, not for a few weeks and we need to move on. These things can happen, it was very unfortunate but it’s our reality.
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