Arsenal vice-captain Mikel Arteta has urged his team-mates to remain focused from now until the end of the season as they eye their first piece of silverware for nine years.
The Spanish midfielder has been talking to the club’s official website and he is hoping that a trophy would be a massive turning point for the club.
Despite being knocked out of the Champions League midweek by Bayern Munich, The Gunners managed to hold them to a 1-1 draw in Germany on Tuesday, and Arteta is hopeful that they can take the positives from that result and push on to win a trophy.
Arteta and co. are currently third in the Premier League and also in the FA Cup Semi-Final where they will face Wigan Athletic, and the Spaniard believes a trophy would be huge for the club.
“I think it would be a turning point for the club,” the vice-captain said. “[If we won a trophy] it would give you a lift, give you belief that you can start to go in the right direction and hopefully we can do it.
“We have two competitions that we are still in. We want to fight for the league, for sure, and we have a great chance in the FA Cup as well. So we need to enjoy the moment and make the most of it because I think we can do something good.
“We know we are favourites [for the FA Cup]. We know that puts more pressure on us but we are happy with the win in the quarter-final. There is still a month to go [until the semi-final] and there are some tough games coming up.
“That’s why it is important to get some momentum for that moment and go there with belief and in good form.”
When asked about the night in Munich, Arteta believes the players should feel proud.
“Every team that has come here recently has been battered five or 6-0 so that’s the last thing you want, with the experience we had a couple of weeks ago at Liverpool,” he said. “I think [the result was] encouraging, I think the second half was very good.
“We can take a lot of positives from that, and the way we kept them pretty quiet as well. We put in a great shift.
“Even when they scored we kept believing and scored the goal from Lukas and had some situations where if we could make a better decision with the last pass we would have got the second one. And the game was on. But you are talking about probably the best team in Europe at the moment.”
Written by Alex Batt – @AlexBatt – @AlexsArticles
