Mikel Arteta challenged Arsenal to continue improving after a 3–0 win over Slavia Prague in the Champions League notched up a 10th consecutive win in all competitions.
The Gunners kept a ninth clean sheet in a row as they cruised to victory in the Czech capital, with Bukayo Saka’s first-half penalty supplemented by a brace from makeshift striker Mikel Merino after the interval.
The latest shutout from Arsenal’s watertight defence broke a 122-year club record, but Arteta refused to get carried away when speaking postmatch, instead insisting that the players’ mindset must be to continue striving for more.
“We want more,” he said after the game. “We can still improve and do things better. That’s the right mindset to have, and we’re happy with what we’re doing. But I’m not satisfied at all, we can play better, defend better, and today we should have done some things better in the opposition half.
“It’s very tricky against them. But I’m very pleased for a lot of reasons—obviously a winning run in the Champions League without conceding a goal, at a really tough place to come.
“And we talked about being emotionally in control, and to not get frustrated when we had to play that game because we’d have the chances, the way they set up, and we certainly can look back on another very impressive performance.”
Answering a question specifically related to Arsenal’s record-breaking defence, Arteta continued: “There’s a lot of work there to achieve that. The most pleasing thing is probably not the record, it’s the mindset of the players. They are talking about how we can still do better. There was one or two situations that we could have resolved better.
“If we do that, we can keep improving and that record will have a bigger meaning.”
