Mikel Arteta has explained his thought process despite Tuesday’s semi-final team selection, as well as how he broke the news to those who wouldn’t be starting.
Arsenal fans were generally a little surprised upon seeing Tuesday night’s team to face Atletico Madrid, as it was exactly the same side that had faced Fulham a few days earlier.
The expectation was that more of the players who had featured in the first leg would have returned to the team, but that wasn’t the case.
Mikel Arteta himself admitted he went through multiple alternative options before landing on the team he ultimately started on Tuesday, and it wasn’t an easy call to make.
“If you see my iPad, the amount of line-ups I’ve done and changed and turned it again, and what about this and the possible subs and if they do that, we do this,” Arteta said.
“In the end it was my gut feeling. I had such a good feeling from what I saw a few days ago against Fulham.
“To do that, it was painful because it was difficult to leave important players out because they all want to be involved and start this kind of game. You saw all the finishers, the manner that they got into the pitch and how much they helped the team.”
As Arteta mentions, Tuesday’s team meant breaking bad news to a number of players, with Gabriel Martinelli, Noni Madueke, Martin Zubimendi, Martin Odegaard, and Piero Hincapie all starting the first leg only to drop to the bench.
But the Arsenal boss says the players had the right response to his decision to leave them out of the lineup.
“I went to some of the players and told them: I’m sorry, but I’ll be picking the same lineup against Fulham,” Arteta recalled. “They said to me: ‘Boss! We’re here whenever you need us, and then they hugged me.'”
Those players will now be training hard for the chance to start Arsenal’s remaining Premier League fixtures, and to earn a spot in the lineup for the Champions League final.
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