Arsenal’s coach, Mikel Arteta, is giving their Sunday’s 2-0 defeat of Newcastle to the god of revenge.
Before the fiasco, he made the boys watch the video of how Newcastle shattered their Champions League dream last year.
With that, they all seemed to have got possessed by the revenge demon, and he believes that made the difference on Sunday.
He said after the match: “We had to feel it,” he said. “It wasn’t enough just to talk about it, we had to feel it, we had to see it, we had to recognise our faces. Not just the players but what it meant for the staff as well. That’s football. You can win or lose but that feeling that we didn’t do enough on the day, we had to put it right.
“I was looking at the video so I didn’t see their faces. You don’t have to be genius to see it. The word was ‘pain’ and then the desire for revenge. I think they had that today in their bellies.
Mikel Arteta applauds Arsenal’s away supporters after a big win over Newcastle in the Premier League. Getty Images
“When you have question marks you have to resolve them straight away. When you have the emotions we had last year in that dressing room, you have to feel them again, realise how nasty they are and then find a way to approach the game differently because demands were going to be different from last year.
“The boys did that extremely well so I’m really proud of them.”
