Mikel Arteta dead set on completing ‘mission’ of guiding Arsenal past Chelsea

Evening Standard

Mikel Arteta said it is his “mission” to knock Chelsea out of the Carabao Cup and deliver Arsenal’s first major trophy in almost six years after last season’s “painful” semi-final exit.Arteta could be missing four defenders for the opening-leg clash at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday. Riccardo Calafiori, Piero Hincapie and Cristhian Mosquera are all certainly out, while there are significant doubts over William Saliba’s fitness.Arsenal failed to progress to the final of the Carabao Cup last year following an emphatic 4-0 aggregate defeat by Newcastle.They were also knocked out of the semi-finals of the Champions League and fell short in the title race too. Arteta’s sole silverware as Arsenal manager so far remains the 2020 FA Cup.However, they head into Wednesday’s first leg still fighting on all four fronts. The Gunners are top of both the Premier League and Champions League, and through to the fourth round of the FA Cup following their 4-1 win at Portsmouth on Sunday.

Transcript

00:00Yes, football gives you another chance, we've been really consistent again in the competition

00:08and now we have to knock another big team out of the competition to be in the final

00:13and that's the mission, hopefully we learn from last year because it was painful, especially

00:19the manner that the games went and the amount of chances that we missed not to go through,

00:25but hopefully this year we are better and especially more efficient.

00:28Do you think getting to a semi-final at this stage of the season with the potential of

00:33reaching a final can help with the tension when you're trying to get over the line in

00:38other competitions?

00:39Well, the more you are involved in these kind of games, the better because it gives you a

00:43notch, it brings the team a different kind of energy and it gives you the sense that the

00:50objective is very, very close and that's a massive motivation for everybody so we know

00:55that we are two games away from playing a final, we have to go game by game and the first

00:59one is time for bridge and we know we have a really tough opponent in front.

01:02.

01:03Okay.

01:04Are you able to throw in?

01:05.

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