Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta reacts to trophyless season: 'If it doesn’t hurt then it means you don’t love winning' | OneFootball

Gunners will finish trophyless for a fifth straight season following Champions League semi-final exit

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has admitted that it will “hurt” him to finish this season without a trophy.

The Gunners hopes of landing silverware ended on Wednesday night when they were knocked out of the Champions League by Paris Saint-Germain.

The French champions beat Arsenal 2-1 to win their semi-final 3-1 on aggregate and setup a showdown with Inter Milan in the final.

It means the Gunners have now not lifted a major trophy since 2020, when they won the FA Cup during Arteta’s first season in charge.

“If it doesn’t hurt then it means you don’t love winning as much as I do, that’s for sure,” said Arteta. “But you need to understand as well certain things that happened to understand.

“It was impossible to try to aim to get the same kind of points but what we did was to overperform when we could do, so there’s a lot of ways to look at it when I sit down, have a look back and I will make a much better reflection of that.

“I have so much to achieve and do, and we need to improve and get done. That is what drives me every day. Those people and the staff and the players drive me every single day.

If it doesn’t hurt then it means you don’t love winning as much as I do, that’s for sure

Mikel Arteta

“But yeah, if there is somebody probably that has raised the standard and the expectation the highest, it has been me. Because I have been demanding and expecting much more, and after that much more. And after that much more.

“For me it is the only way to do it, for everybody to have really high standards and demands. We are very very close to achieving it.

“I understand the disappointment, and the criticism. It is all part of it. At the end there is one winner and the rest of them aren’t going to win, so they need to reinvent themselves and do better. That is part of the cycle.”

Arteta revealed after Wednesday’s loss to PSG that the dressing room was full of emotion, with some players in tears.

The Arsenal boss now needs to lift his squad quickly as they head to Liverpool this weekend. The Gunners are currently second in the table - but they risk being overtaken by Manchester City.

Mikel Arteta consoles Jurrien Timber after Arsenal’s Champions League semi-final exit

Getty Images

“I wasn’t in tears [after the PSG game], but I was very touched, very sad because I was really convinced that we had everything to make it happen, and especially how the first 20 or 30 minutes played out and how we suffocated them and what we generated,” said Arteta.

“They were there for the taking. Even if we score and it gets to 2-2 with 15 minutes to go, my feeling would still be the same.

“And then we don’t achieve it, it is painful because the dream is over and a lot of people that we could make very happy and proud, we were unable to do it. And that’s obviously something painful in sport.”