Mikel Arteta has said Arsenal’s ambition to win major trophies is growing as they go into the second leg of their Champions League tie against Porto at the summit of the Premier League.
Arsenal can seal a place in the last eight of Europe’s top club competition for the first time since 2010 if they can overturn a 1-0 deficit against the Portuguese side on Tuesday night. Arteta’s side, who have recorded eight successive victories in the Premier League and scored 33 goals in the process, are guaranteed to go into the international break top of the table after Sunday’s draw between Liverpool and Manchester City.
“It’s great to be top, that’s for sure. It was an amazing game of football – two magnificent teams with so many alternatives,” said Arteta. “I think it’s an amazing situation that we are leading both looking at the level that those two teams have, that we are still there and we are still at the top. So the ambition raises – we want to continue to be there and we have to go game by game.”
The defeat in Portugal three weeks ago was the only aberration in Arsenal’s resurgent form since the turn of the year. Gabriel Martinelli is a serious doubt for the return at the Emirates Stadium after missing training on Monday having sustained a foot injury in the 6-0 thrashing of Sheffield United and Arteta acknowledged that his team must perform better to progress to the next round.
“We’re certainly going to have to tweak a few things to generate much more than we did. It’s the level of the Champions League,” he said. “We have to make it happen. We’re going to have to be very good to achieve that. Every week, every opponent has their strengths and weaknesses and the way they play the game.
“We’ve played these games many times in the Premier League. We’ll just focus on ourselves and doing more. We need [the crowd] playing every ball with us and we need that emotional control as well. It’s a beautiful opportunity to live one of those nights.”
Martin Ødegaard believes Arsenal have learned from their defeat at the Estádio do Dragao and last season’s unsuccessful battle for the Premier League title. “We spoke about it a bit after the game. We didn’t play our best,” said the captain. “We weren’t good enough on the ball. Straight after we knew what we had to do differently already. It’s the only game we didn’t win this year so that’s enough motivation.”
Ødegaard added: “I think we’re a better team [than last year]. We’ve made some good signings and we’ve taken what happened last season to make us better this season. I think we learned a good lesson and coming towards the end of the season hopefully we can use it in a good way.”
