Mikel Arteta has insisted that Arsenal will not panic after losing successive games for the first time this season but admitted that they must rediscover their identity to get their campaign back on track.
The Premier League leaders face Sporting in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final in Lisbon on Tuesday after seeing their hopes of an unprecedented quadruple crumble with defeats by Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final and the Championship side Southampton in the FA Cup. Bukayo Saka and Jurriën Timber have been ruled out as they continue to struggle with injuries, although there was better news for Arteta with Gabriel Magalhães, Declan Rice and Leandro Trossard all expected to feature against the Portuguese champions.
The Arsenal manager has been criticised for not fielding his strongest side at Southampton on Saturday but asked for some perspective after a season in which they became the first team to win all eight league stage matches in this competition.
“I think what you have to do is clear,” he said. “Instead of panic, understand if that happens, why it happened, and bring clarity. And when you analyse that and you accept that, you’ll be better. That’s it, and that’s the thing that we have to do.”
Asked whether he was concerned about his side’s ability to cope with pressure situations, Arteta said: “No. I think when you have the opportunity that we have, that has to be taken through excitement, through preparing yourself in the best possible way, focusing on the present and on the things that we have to do. And especially in our identity, it’s very clear what is taking us on the way to where we are, and that’s where we have to focus.
“There are parts and identities created by behaviours, not with words in the world, or with things that I want to achieve. And we have so many facts in the areas that, in our opinion, make us the team and the club that we are.”
David Raya is set to start against Sporting after the reserve keeper Kepa Arrizabalaga was picked for the defeats by City and Southampton. Raya said the decision was “just part of football – sometimes you get picked, sometimes you don’t” but is clearly raring to return. “Now that it’s gone, we just have to use that fuel, that pain that we had after the game to pick it up for the rest of the season,” he said.
This is Arsenal’s third successive appearance in the last eight of Europe’s premier club competition and they have good memories of their last trip to this stadium, giving a 5-1 thrashing in last season’s league stage when their opponents were managed by Ruben Amorim’s successor, João Pereira. He lasted less than six weeks but Sporting – who overturned a 3-0 deficit against Bodø/Glimt in Lisbon in the last round with a 5-0 second-leg win – have been in excellent form under Rui Borges and are trying to reach the semi-finals for the first time.
“No, I don’t believe in that,” said Borges when asked whether it is a good time to face Arsenal. “They are a great team and great teams always want to win. They will be more focused and more willing to show their collective and individual capacity so I think it will make things more difficult for us, the fact they lost the last two matches. We look at ourselves, and we believe we can do something extraordinary tomorrow, and something that hasn’t been done before by Sporting.”