Mikel Arteta makes psychological claim about Arsenal and discusses Tomiyasu error

Arteta revealed he hasn’t seen Takehiro Tomiyasu “make a backpass like that in seven years” as City inflicted a first home defeat of the season on Arsenal.

Goals from Kevin de Bruyne, Jack Grealish and Erling Haaland secured a crucial three points for Pep Guardiola’s side at Emirates Stadium.

Here are the key comments from Arteta’s post-match press conference:

On how he picks the players up after the defeat:

“We have to pick the points up because the performances are there.

“For sure what we’ve done today against this team, believe me, this wasn’t the game that they wanted to play, but we wanted the points and we didn’t get them and, at the end, the games are decided in the boxes.

“We have given too much away today and we weren’t ruthless enough to convert our chances and that’s where we have to improve.”

On whether being second in the table is a psychological disadvantage:

“Psychologically there is a marathon still, so psychologically there is very far to go.

“I said it at the start, I said it three months ago and I say it today, it’s about tomorrow and the most important thing is how we are tomorrow and focus on that, because the rest of the things, we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

On playing out from the back:

“When errors happen as part of the risks we take, the risk and reward is understanding what we have to do. We didn’t understand well what we had to do, especially in the second half, when they changed their formation and went in a different shape.

“But we came out of there a lot of times and created big problems for them, so it’s always that balance.”