Mikel Arteta has claimed that his focus is on making Arsenal the best team in the Premier League.
The Gunners have been in top form of late, winning five matches on the bounce as well as playing some exciting football, but will face a really tough test when they play host to Liverpool.
Tomorrow’s match will be huge for both the title race and for the race for the top four, with the Reds having the potential to close to within a point of Man City on top of the table, while we could potentially build a four-point gap on Man United, and close to within five points of Chelsea in third.
This is a big improvement from previous seasons, but we still have some way to go before we can challenge the likes of Liverpool and City in the table, and the manager was keen to praise the work done by his counterpart Jurgen Klopp who he will face tomorrow.
“Credit to Jurgen, the coaching staff and to the club as well for what they have created,” Arteta told Arsenal Media. “They haven’t just created a team that can compete and be successful, They have created a huge cultural understanding of who Liverpool is today. The stadium and the atmosphere they can create, the support, the level, how they communicate. It’s a long of things, not just individuals, or the players that they have recruited and the plan that they had to reach that level. It’s a whole plan that I really value I think.
On whether Arteta was keen to replicate what Klopp’s entourage have done at Anfield, he replied: “It’s very different because our histories are different, the timings of success are different. But we all want to achieve the same thing: to be the best team in this league and that’s our focus.”
That’s an ambitious target for Arteta, but given our improvements this term and the amount of potential there already is in our young squad, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility to think we could win the league at some point, but we are some way off that at present.
Do you believe our current setup has the potential to challenge for the title in the coming years?
Patrick