Arsenal OPEN for business! | Mikel Arteta ENCOURAGES January transfer movement

Happy New Year. Can we get a few, I'm afraid traditionally, injury latest? How's Lin Shankar? Well, he's progressing well. We have another training session tomorrow and I will evaluate whether he's available or not to play and start the game. And the rest, there is no actual any news. So, Thomas Parton obviously is not yet ready for you, hasn't gone to AFCON. Can you just tell me about the negotiations involved in that? It was about common sense obviously. He had a long-term injury. He's been trying to push his rehab. He really wanted to be with his national team but obviously he's still far from training with the team and it didn't make a lot of sense to be moved. There's been talk inevitably after you lose two games about you being a bit light in defence and all that. The situation with Juria, how does that come into your thinking when you're thinking about defenders coming in? Well, unfortunately that's a very long-term injury. He's doing really well but he's still very far from being fit to train with the team. That's something that has to compete with the team so we don't expect him anytime soon. So it's what we have, it's the situation that we have now as well with Tommy having to leave and we have to cope with that. So a left-back coming in in January, even on loan, is something that you're considering? We are open for the transfer market but again, the emphasis is on making the most out of the players that we have. We will work together with the club to understand whether there are any possibilities and we have any good options and first of all focus on the players that we have. But it's equally as likely that you'll do no business at all? That's a possibility. I'm not sure about Mateo's report this week that the club have been in touch with PGMOL about some of the things that have been fouled on him. I imagine that the club and the referees are in constant contact about all kinds of issues. Is that just part of that or is it a specific issue? That's daily communication, weekly communication that we have about certain topics but nothing specific about that one. Is there a trend now for referees to maybe ignore some of the early tackles? I think the referees know and they know the tactics of the opponent and they know that some players are more targeted and as well the way they play. Obviously they invite more tackles but I think they are well aware of that. So it's not a specific request to the referees to go easy or get ready to go easy on you? Are you surprised by the commentary that it's provoked? I think that's been going on for two years. We have wingers that provoke a lot of fouls and a lot of attention and that's something normal. Liverpool, the FA Cup. You've won the FA Cup. Is it a real feeling for winning it? A real feeling. It was a great experience to win the first title the way we did it. There is a big history between this competition and our club and now we have a big opportunity to start again and make a beautiful journey. You spoke about the potential shortages in your squad for various reasons. Obviously Mo Salah won't be around for Liverpool to have time. How much of a miss do you think he will be in the FA Cup? We are missing very important players and we knew that. We have to adapt to that and still perform and win matches. How important is it to keep the campaign going? I think it's a great initiative from the club. Giving support and creating a safer environment with the power and the capacity that we have to help people, to transform certain areas of London as well. I think it's a campaign that started three years ago and has helped a lot of people already and brought a lot of attention. We can make the streets safer around our city, especially with people that we have kids who will sleep better. Is this the ideal time for you or is this not the ideal time for you? It's the draw. We played two weeks ago and it was an incredible match and I'm sure it will be a really good match again. Is it a match whereby you'd rather have this level of opposition where your team have to bring their A-game or would you rather have a level of opposition maybe not as high as Liverpool where they wouldn't win? We don't have a choice. If you ask both teams, probably in the draw we were expecting something different but we have this incredible clash in the first round and we have to go for it. Reflecting back on the defeats to West Ham and Fulham, do you now know what went wrong? Yes, I do. We weren't at the level, we weren't good enough. I don't think we deserved to lose the match but we didn't do enough to win it. Are you worried that's going to continue into 2024? Hopefully not because it was a one-off. I haven't seen the team do what we did in certain periods of the matches so hopefully not. Has it affected confidence and belief in you? It affects momentum that we had. Till Christmas Day we are top of the league. Six days later you are fourth. So you can be very tempted to look at things with a microscope or take the telescope and look a little bit further and have things with a little bit more perspective and my job, big time, is to look with a telescope and have perspective and analyse things in the broader way and not get affected by one performance. Not results, one performance. Looking at the perspective, you love this competition with the FA Cup, it's special around the world. It's a great competition, as I said before, very attached to the club and the club has won it more times. We expect a great game and a good run. You'll have VAR in the game, we saw VAR used to send off Dominic Calvert-Lewding in the Palace. There are a lot of games this weekend where there is no VAR, unless the tie is made on a Premier League ground. Shouldn't the FA Cup, being the competition it is, have the same rules for everybody, i.e. you either all have it or none of you have it? Ideally, yes. I would support that idea 100%. A lot was made at the Anfield Amphitheatre before the league. Do you think the Emirates can have the same sort of place? It will be our own one. We are really happy with the atmosphere that we have created at the Emirates and it's been incredibly supportive. Can we tweak it and sometimes make it even more hostile? I think we can and that's the next step in my opinion. We have to be so grateful for what we are achieving and creating in our home ground and I think Sunday is going to be a big one again. I think the team has to give more. I think the team has to transmit that bite, that aggression and that intimidation and dominance to the opponent. I think Celtan games this season and Champions League games are going to create that next step. That's my feeling. How important do you think that win was? Winning always gives you more credit. It attaches you emotionally to people because winning at the end creates a very special feeling and those moments are always really important when you want to evolve relationships and when you have certain attachments to the team and the players and I think that helps. Do you think there was a chance that you might have lost your job in the difficult months of the season? I don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. We won it for a reason. We deserved to win it. We did it against big teams as well. Only that one after the Community Shield as well. We are here for a reason. Do you think it reflects on that? I think it helps as I said but I don't know. After a month gone by, look now. You lose two matches and what is happening now? Six days ago we were top of the league which means we were the best team, the most consistent team in the Premier League. Put things in perspective. You are supposed to have this mid-season break after Sunday's game. You have a replay of that break. Is it something the calendar needs to look at? Yes, that break will be minimal and we have planned with both scenarios obviously because there is a possibility always in football. We want to win the game, we will try to win the game but that has to be considered because it is there. Is it something the FA Cup needs to look at next season? I think so but we will see what happens because with the new format of the Champions League as well there will be more games so I don't know where we are going to fit them. It tells you well about people seeing the Carabao Cup on Sunday. We will see on Sunday. I cannot give you the line-up right now. There is still weeks to go. Hopefully it is weeks. When he is going to return and how many weeks it will depend on how the next step of training with the team will take him but he is progressing well. He is doing well again but it was a surgery that required two different things to get resolved. The first signs are good. Obviously it is still a bit far from what we wanted but he needs to keep working and hopefully in the next few weeks we can have him. In the summer there was a link to him leaving the FA Cup last week. I was wondering how close was that to every other thing? It was never a part of our plans no. Going forward, I know you wanted to give him a win this season and just as he was about to build up he got that victory. If he comes to you towards the end of the season and his confidence hasn't changed and he says I need to be positive about my career before I get into the FA Cup. Would you accept that? This is a two-way conversation all the time with players and I love listening to understand how they are feeling and what is the best thing or what they want to know because you really have to be aligned with them and how they are feeling and they have to feel important. Obviously there is still the biggest part of the season to play now and we have to be patient and he will have his chances. If the player more generally comes to you and says he wants to win, can you help him understand in a way that you are happy to say that you are happy for him? That depends on the situation in the squad. We want to help the players to fulfil their feelings but as well they need to understand that they are in a team, in a squad that has been assembled and planned with them in the squad and you don't always get what you want because maybe they wanted something different six months ago, that it was a new contract or it was another individual target that they had so it doesn't always go your way. One of the subjects that you have spoken about in recent weeks has been execution in the final third and I just wondered, as a coach, when it comes to the final part or finishing the shot, is that a specific area where you feel like you have less control as a coach and there is more responsibility with the individual player? I think overall the execution is in every part of the field but when it comes to those spaces, the timing and the definition of an action, it becomes trickier to coach and certainly to replicate an action in the game. That's probably the hardest thing to replicate in football. The timing, the behaviour of the opponent, the distance between the ball and the feet of the opponent, the exact location of that shot, the position of the keeper, the game state. It's very tricky but it's something that we have to improve recently especially in the way that we have transformed those chances into goals. Do you try to emulate that in training? Yes, for sure. It's our job and the things that put them in the most concrete and reliable scenarios I think is going to help the players to do it better. In terms of that finishing, Sancho and Martinelli, they're not finishing at the level they were previously, maybe last season. Do you think that's just a question of over time, if it comes back, if it fluctuates naturally, is it confidence? What do you put it down to? Well, I think what they did last year is exceptional and to maintain those numbers we knew that it was going to be extremely difficult because it was a one-off. For us, a one-off in the way that we need all the resources and all the kind of goals to maintain the levels that we want.