Arteta hails “really important” Carabao Cup victory as Arsenal sees off Wimbledon to maintain their winning momentum ahead of Sunday’s North London derby
Back to the Premier League, Arsenal had lost their first three games to a point of ending up on the relegation zone. However, currently, the club seems to have bounced back to beat Norwich and Burnley 1-0 in their fourth and fifth game respectively.
Still in the winning momentum, Arsenal is with another victory under their belt as they smashed a comfortable 3-0 win in their Carabao Cup third-round with AFC Wimbledon.
As such, coach Mikel Arteta feels his team is ready for a crunch in the north London derby where victory would see Arsenal draw level on points with their rivals.
When asked how key the winning momentum could be this weekend, Arteta responded, “really important”.
“Confidence rises, competition brings the best out of you when you have difficult moments and the boys have managed to win three games in a row. So, credit to how they have handled the situation, and now they are obviously looking forward to playing on Sunday in what is our biggest game of the season”.
“As long as we were 1-0 up obviously, they were still in the game and in a set-piece situation, you can concede a goal. We knew that we had to close the game down and we did it in the end and looked comfortable”.
Additionally, when asked of Thomas Partey who continues to build fitness on the back of an ankle injury, Arteta said.
“Yes, he hasn’t played a lot of minutes since he has been injured. We believe the rhythm of the matches is nothing like any training session and so he needed to play and it was very beneficial”.
“We didn’t think it was a risk that is why we decided to play him but it is always a risk when you have a match or training sessions at the level of intensity we train at”.
“We believe it was the right thing to do and he was really pushing for it so I think it worked out well”.