Arsenal appointed Mikel Arteta as their new manager on Friday and on Saturday, the Gunners played a 0-0 stalemate against Everton in the Premier League.
The North London were being managed for the final time by interim boss Freddie Ljungberg and the Gunners legend chose to name a series of youngsters in his first XI.
Last weekend, Arsenal suffered an opprobrious 3-0 loss at the hands of Manchester City and while this weekend, they did not perform so poorly but surely Mikel Arteta wouldn’t have been thrilled with what he saw at Goodison Park.
The visiting side could only manage two efforts on target throughout the whole match and according to a few people, the players of the pitch were a bit nervous since their new that their new boss was watching from the stands.
And many of these people feel that due to the presence of Arteta, the Arsenal players did not have 100 per cent focus.
When Freddie Ljungberg was asked this very same question, here’s what he said: “It’s so difficult to say[whether Arteta’s presence caused problems for the Arsenal players]. I hope that they cared but at the same time I wasn’t happy with how we played against Man City.
“I don’t think we had enough energy, we didn’t respect the game enough, and that’s why I picked the team I did today. I said when I did this that I would give everybody a chance. I think I’ve given everybody a chance to play.
“If people then run and try hard in training, I would reward them and these boys have been doing that for three weeks. I felt like, ‘OK, this is your time so show me’. They did.
“They really, really put an effort in there and I’m really proud of them.
“I think we have a lot of talent but from what I said before against City, I wasn’t happy with the effort we put in. We played a top team and of course, they’re very good, but you still need to run and you need to put in an effort.
“What I put on here today, I know they’re young and don’t have any experience – some even made their Premier League debuts and we had an 18-year-old at left-back who’s a winger – but they did really, really well and dominated a game against Everton away from home. We, as a club, should be very proud of that.”
