Mikel Arteta has urged the Arsenal players that are currently struggling to enter the club’s first team to work hard and win a place in the team instead of complaining.
The Spaniard has made the Gunners one of the toughest teams to beat since he became their manager.
They have won the FA Cup and Community Shield this year, but not every player in the squad has made a telling contribution.
The Spaniard has had to focus on the players that he thinks will give him results and that means some of the squad haven’t been playing.
These players have been complaining, but Arteta has revealed that complaining about not playing will not change his mind, but a player can work his way back into the starting XI.
He claimed that there have been examples of players who have struggled to get into the senior team when he first arrived, but they are now important members of the club’s first-team setup.
Arteta said as quoted by the Star: “The way we try to manage the squad, communicate to the players, we just try to tell everybody their role that we expect from them.
“The players have really good communication with myself, the coaching staff and the club as well to put on the table their feelings, how they see themselves, what they are looking [for] in their careers.
“We just try to assess everything individually but also in a collective way and a player that doesn’t play is never happy and I don’t want them to be happy. What I want is for them to try to earn their place, try to change it.
“We have a lot of examples since I joined where players that weren’t featuring too much, they weren’t playing a lot and now they are playing regularly so… I don’t like the excuse saying, ‘There’s a lot of competition, I don’t get the chances.’
“Take it the other way around and work hard, be involved and when you have the chance instead of talking off the pitch, just do it on the pitch, which is the best way, the most efficient way to talk.”
