Mikel Arteta attended his pre-game news conference at the Sobha Realty Training Centre 48 hours prior to Sunday’s FA Cup encounter against Manchester United, which marks the start of our FA Cup journey. The manager was questioned about his thoughts on United under Ruben Amorim, whether he plans to hire during the January transfer window, and the No More Red campaign, which will see us don our all-white uniform once more to help protect young people from teenage violence and knife crime. What he said was as follows: on the FA Cup’s significance to us this season: We’ve won it fourteen times, and it’s a competition that holds a special place in our hearts. Playing against a huge club is a lovely game.
on whether his final win in 2020 was his best day in management:
The memory of winning something and celebrating and sharing it with your people is the ultimate goal. I will never forget the process and the people that you meet, but overall I have great memories about the competition.
on what he’s made of Ruben Amorim at United so far:
When you look especially at the big teams [they’ve played], how they perform and the results that they’ve got, it’s very impressive. I know him well, I followed him a lot when he was in Portugal and there is a big reason why he is where he is at the moment, and he deserves to be there.
on the difficulty of turning a club’s fortunes around mid-season:
Every manager when he is appointed is for a reason, but the reasons can be different. Sometimes it’s just to improve a football team and get more performance out of certain players, sometimes it’s to transform to the football club. That’s a totally different dimension of a job, and if I have to relate to mine at that time, it was more towards that than the previous one I mentioned.
