Arteta pleased as Arsenal reserves cruise past Sunderland to the semi-final

Arsenal probably had the easiest QuarterFinal draw when they pulled Sunderland out of the hat, and Mikel Arteta was so confident that he made wholesale changes to the starting line-up, with only White, Smith-Rowe and Odegaard retaining their spots.

Although it took some time for the gunners to find their feet, they easily brushed aside Sunderland, with a hat-trick from Nketiah, a rare goal from Pepe and a fantastic moment on Charlie Patino’s debut.

So what did Arteta think about the performance of his makeshift side “Very good.” he told Arsenal.com. “We are through to the semi-final which is what we wanted. We decided to rotate quite a lot today and it took some time in the first half to get that cohesion. We scored two good goals but after that we lacked something. We got more control in the second half and scored some beautiful goals as well.”

This was Arsenal’s 4th win in a row, scoring 14 goals in the process, so what did Arteta have to say about that? “When you win football matches everything looks much better. We have to be consistent with the decisions that we make, keep trying to improve all the time the way we play, perform better and better and the results will come. They are coming right now and now it is about consistency. There are a lot of games coming up and we want to maintain that form.”

So Arsenal are now in the semis, and Arteta is not expecting an easy game whoever we draw. He continued: “I don’t see a lot of coaches and clubs tossing this competition off, because everyone wants to win and everyone wants to win trophies. If you see the lineups 10 years ago and now they are pretty different.”

Well, we can only beat who is in front of us, but we are now getting much closer to another Wembley Final….

COYG!