Mikel Arteta is looking forward to returning to Ibrox to face Rangers after his spell there as a player.

Arsenal take their pre-season squad to Glasgow this weekend to face Rangers, coming off the back of a 2-1 defeat to Hibs in their opening pre-season game of the summer.

Mikel Arteta spent two years at Rangers before moving to Real Sociedad and then Everton, making 68 appearances and scoring 14, just two fewer than he managed in 150 games for Arsenal.

Speaking to the media after Arsenal’s opening preseason game, Arteta was asked about the match that takes place this weekend.

“It’s a very good game for me,” Arteta said, “especially because I played there and it is a really special place. I’m looking forward to that game.”

Arteta also gave his thoughts on the game against Hibs. “Well I’m always disappointed when we lose a football match but it is the first game, we played with many kids and we only had four training sessions,” Arteta said.

“We’ve trained really hard and you could see that the players were a little bit leggy. I think we conceded the first goal, an accident, and the second goal was clearly offside. We created many, many chances but we didn’t score. That’s what pre-season is for, to take the things that we haven’t done well into a training session and then improve.”