With Arsenal’s season wobbling between potential glory and epic failure, Mikel Arteta has thrown away the lightbulb props and demanded that his team finish the season playing with fearless intensity.
“Pure fire, that’s what I want to see on the players, on the people, on myself,” Arteta said as his side still have Premier League and Champions League glory in their sights. “Go for it because the opportunity is unbelievable. There is no fear. It’s just purpose, fire, direction and conviction that we’re going to do it.”
Arteta also thinks that playing with attacking fluency is the best way for his side to overcome nerves and control their emotions, something Arsenal failed to do against Bournemouth on Saturday, when the team did “strange things”, according to the manager, leading to a third defeat in four matches. Arteta’s training exercise in the build-up to the 2-1 loss, involving the players using a marker pen to think about their focus, clearly did not have the desired effect.
Rice is nursing an injury that makes him a doubt for the second leg against Sporting ames Gill/Danehouse/Getty
Arsenal start a defining five days on Wednesday when they try to defend a 1-0 lead at home to Sporting Lisbon and reach the Champions League semi-finals, possibly without Declan Rice, who is nursing an injury. They then take on Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday holding a six-point lead over their rivals, who have a game in hand.
While technically Arsenal do not need to win either game to reach the last four and stay top of the league, it is likely that they will have to beat Newcastle United and Fulham in the following two games if they want to lift the league trophy. And to do so, something will need to change as none of the fit attacking players in the squad have been firing in the past few months.
Gabriel Martinelli, Leandro Trossard and Kai Havertz have not scored in the league in 2026. Eberechi Eze has two goals in the competition this year and Noni Madueke has been involved in only three league goals all season.
Compared with the first 20 league matches, there has been a noticeable reduction in creativity in the 11 league games since the goalless draw with Liverpool in January. The number of through-balls and moves of ten passes or more are down by about a third and they have registered fewer shots on target.
Like several Arsenal attackers, Eze’s goal output has fallen short of expectations Stuart MacFarlane/Getty/Arsenal
Martín Zubimendi has been less influential, dropping deeper and passing less often. He was especially poor at passing and tracking runs against Bournemouth and had to be consoled by his team-mates at one stage during the game. “To maintain that excellent level is almost impossible,” Arteta said. “It is part of that journey as a player.”
Overall, Arsenal have been relying on either special moments or set pieces to get through games. Eze’s brilliant early shot put them ahead against Bayer Leverkusen in the second leg of the round-of-16 tie, while it was Gabriel Martinelli’s acceleration and pass that set up Kai Havertz’s goal in stoppage time in Lisbon last week. Luck has also played its part as they salvaged a draw in Leverkusen thanks to a fortunate penalty, won by Madueke.
Arsenal’s strength at set pieces has been a theme of the campaign and it has compensated for deficiencies elsewhere. On average, they are expected to score just a shade more than a goal per game this season from open play. Their ability to create more in-play chances would improve if Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka were fit.
Odegaard aggravated a knee issue against Sporting last week and Saka has been managing an achilles injury with no certainty of when he will return. “Hopefully it’s going to be a matter of days, not weeks,” Arteta said. “But he has to see when he’s loading more, how he responds to that kind of progression. The moment he can tolerate the load and the pain he has, he will be available and then we will have to see how much he can contribute.”
After three losses in four matches, Arteta knows he must reignite ArsenalJavier Garcia/Shutterstock Editorial
Arteta has chopped and changed between Trossard and Martinelli on the left and will have to change his midfield if Rice fails to recover in time, having not trained on Tuesday. Christian Norgaard would seem the obvious replacement for Rice yet he has played only 56 minutes in the league this season, underlining an apparent lack of trust in him.
Eze was bright when he came on against Bournemouth but he accepted that it had taken time to settle into a new way of playing after his summer move from Crystal Palace. He has had rough periods, including a mistake that cost a goal against Aston Villa in December, as well as good moments, such as five goals in two matches against Tottenham Hotspur. “It was the tactical stuff [that was new to me],” Eze said. “The way we played, saw the game and different things to consider. Details, so much to take in. That does takes time.”
Eze was a boyhood Arsenal fan and is aware that some neutrals want them to trip up in the run-in. “I’m not too interested in what people think, how they feel about us winning,” he said. “I just know that we’ve got a team that’s more than capable and has proven that we’re of the highest level, and when we do win it will be down to everyone to deal with that.”
That is another quality Arteta wants to see: defiance.
Arsenal (1) v Sporting (0)
Champions League quarter-final, second leg
Wednesday, 8pm
TV TNT Sports