North London side Arsenal played two friendly games during the past couple of weeks and they suffered a defeat in one of those matches.
At first, they picked up a 6-0 win over Charlton Athletic but then went on to lose 3-2 to Brentford. And this second result has been the point of many debates across the footballing circuit.
But now speaking in the buildup of the Man City vs Arsenal game next week, Mikel Arteta has revealed that the objective of the two friendlies were not to pick up wins.
He told Sky Sports, as reported by The Sun: “We’re trying different things.
“We’re trying to give minutes in their legs to all of the players, obviously you have to change a lot of players through the games.
“Getting adapted to playing in an empty stadium as well, not having that energy from the fans. It was good, we played two friendlies, we’re getting a bit of rhythm, we haven’t played for a while, we tried to make is as close as possible to a real game.
“We’ve been trying in big groups just for ten days. You can play a friendly game, you can play 45 minutes, but it’s not the same as Premier League rhythm at all.
“We will have to see that. I think it will be very difficult to sustain big rhythms for 90 minutes for the first few games at least.”
Not only Arsenal but a few other Premier League sides have also lost their friendlies so it’s no big deal.
But the big plus from these matches for Mikel Arteta is the fact that he has been able to test the fitness of all his first-team players who had been out injured before the lockdown began.
The Arsenal manager should be able to name his strongest XI at the Eithad on Wednesday but what remains to be seen is if that is enough against the might of Manchester City?
