Arteta hails ‘really positive weekend’ and ‘big player’ Eze after Arsenal beat Crystal Palace – but says there are four new injury worries | OneFootball

Mikel Arteta says it has been a “really positive weekend” for his Arsenal side after extending their lead at the top of the table with a victory over Crystal Palace.

Meanwhile, Liverpool and Manchester City were also beaten which means the Gunners now sit six points clear of City and seven ahead of last season’s title winners Liverpool.

“No, I wasn’t aware (City were losing at half time), I just found out at the end of the game, I think most of the players as well,” Arteta said.

“They’re not allowed their phones at half time so hopefully they didn’t know!

“A really positive weekend for us, especially because we did what we had to do and it shows the difficulty of the league and how complicated it is to win games.”

Ebere Eze scored the only goal of the game against his former club in the win over Palace and Arteta is backing the attacker to kick on and deliver more big moments.

“No it’s not and that’s what big players do,” he responded when asked about the pressure on Eze to deliver against his old club not being easy to deal with.

“He’s certainly a big player and hopefully that’s going to give him a big boost and confidence to generate many more moments like this because these are the moments that sometimes define a season.

“We knew the difficulty of it (this game), coming after playing every three days.

“We played against a team that in my opinion has been one of the best recently in terms of organisation, how difficult they make it and how frustrated they can make you. And the moment that you lose that concentration they will punish you for sure.

“We have managed to be very stable, playing the game we had to play.”

The only negative for the Gunners was four of Arteta’s key players suffering injury concerns.

William Saliba was forced off at half time, while Declan Rice and Riccardo Calafiori were also later taken off with injury worries.

Gabriel Martinelli, meanwhile, came on as a sub but was seen limping at the end of the game.

“No because I don’t know,” Arteta said when asked if he could provide more details on the injuries. “Not because I don’t want to tell you, because I don’t really know.

“With Willy (Saliba) there are two things related to his substitution and with Declan I don’t really know because it was a knock and I don’t know if it was his calf or Achilles or what it was.

“The other one was Riccy (Calafiori).

“Let’s see how they recover.”

On Martinelli, he said: “We have to check that one but he was a bit uncomfortable. He said he felt something but we don’t know what it is, if it’s a muscular issue or not, so tomorrow we will have more news.”