Quotes from Mikel Arteta

I cannot have a concept of football where everything is based on the opposition. We have to dictate the game, we have to be the ones taking the initiative, and we have to entertain the people coming to watch us.

If you don't have the right culture, in the difficult moments, the tree is going to shake, so my job is to convince everybody that this is how we are going to live, and if you are going to be part of this organisation it has to be in these terms and in this way.

The challenge is how to be better than the day before, than the previous game.

Mauricio Pochettino - he was my captain at PSG and I always knew he would become a manager. He has taken a lot of influence from Marcelo Bielsa, who was his coach with Argentina; they used to talk about things a lot, and now you can see that his teams are really aggressive, both when attacking and defending.

I tell you that the coaches are like cardiologists - they have to enter the player in their hearts so that the message reaches them.

After winning, it's hard to go to not winning.

What I've learned mostly is that you have to be ruthless and you have to be consistent and you have to fit every day the culture of the club to create a winning mentality.

Criticism is part of being at a club like Arsenal. You always have to win and when you're not winning you have to be prepared for that. It's part of your job.

You like more the people that you work with, you believe more in them, you share some fantastic moments and that habit of winning, winning, winning... after you win, you don't want to stop winning.

I think winning brings togetherness and, when you have beautiful experiences together and you win trophies, then those experiences stay within that group.

Without an identity, you cannot plan and you cannot convince a player to do what you want.

To see the line between being good and bad is really thin. It's not easy for anyone, not the manager, the players or the staff.

Monday is going to be a very difficult day, I believe, because after all these emotions, you realise that probably you hang up your boots and stop doing something I have been doing for the last 17 or 18 years in a professional way.

When I was playing in England, I started to realise what Arsenal meant.

How do you recruit a player if you don't really know what it is that you are trying to do? How do you convince a player of the way you want to play if you don't have clarity yourself over why you want to do it?

When you stop for months and you come back, you try everything, and I worked so hard to get back but then you do it again and again and again. You disappoint yourself and other people at the club, the manager, everybody. You don't know how to get it right.

Then you have to convince the players and get them on board with what you are doing, and after that you can start to build. But the identity is the foundation for everything.

When Arsenal knocks on any door, it's difficult to say no. When it knocks on my door, this is my house and it makes it very difficult.

I have tried to convince the players that if we work on certain things in training, they will happen in games and we will score goals from them.

In my playing career, Anfield was the only ground where I had a feeling of being stuck.