Mikel Arteta is hoping the sound of music can help Arsenal seal a place in the top eight of the Champions League and has urged his players to take out the frustration of letting slip a two-goal lead against Aston Villa when they face Dinamo Zagreb on Wednesday night.
Victory against the Croatian side would put Arsenal on the verge of qualifying directly for the last 16 with a trip to Girona next week in their final fixture to come. Arsenal will again be without William Saliba after the Frenchman missed the draw against Villa on Saturday with a hamstring strain, although Arteta said the defender was “evolving well”.
The rest of Arsenal’s squad warmed up for their game against Zagreb – who have not played competitively for a month owing to their league’s winter break, during which they appointed the 2006 Ballon d’Or winner Fabio Cannavaro as their head coach – with booming music accompanying their training session, including the Brazilian classic Mas Que Nada by Sérgio Mendes. Arteta said it had become a regular part of their routine over the years and had helped the process of recovering from the Villa disappointment.
“Music has the capacity to change our mood,” the manager said. “We have certain songs that trigger something in our team. You play a song and immediately you feel different, and we have certain songs that trigger something in our team, because they have some history as well with us, and I will use it when we believe it’s the right way to do it.
“The players were really at it the next day [after Villa] – it’s our job. I don’t want them to feel unlucky with results; we have to control what we can control. Is there anything better that we could have done in the game to win by a big margin? Yes, and we focus on that. I think we were very unlucky. Did the result reflect the performance? No it didn’t – it’s clear and obvious watching it twice. It is what it is and now it’s in our hands to change it and that’s it and move forward.”
Asked whether it was important to bounce back against Zagreb, who are 25th in the standings after six matches, five points behind Arsenal in fifth, Arteta said: “We have been very dominant, which is something in the past that we haven’t been able to do. So we need to keep that going and now we need to capitalise on what we have been doing for many months in this competition and earn the right to be with the top teams in the manner that we want to be. And let’s see if we go to the next stage and deserve to be there.”
Ethan Nwaneri and Riccardo Calafiori are back in contention after injury, and the 15-year-old Max Dowman trained with the first team on Tuesday despite being too young to feature in the Champions League or Premier League. The attacking midfielder celebrated his birthday in December before scoring in Arsenal’s FA Youth Cup win against Queens Park Rangers last week.
“Very impressive at his age,” Arteta said. “As well some of the things that he does in training are unbelievable. Already he is taking very fast steps, because every time we put him in a different challenge, at a different level, he overcomes that hill very quickly.”
