Arteta sets Champions League target for Arsenal
Arteta said to Arsenal’s official website after the announcement: “I’m excited, grateful and really, really happy today. When I spoke to Josh [Kroenke] he could see the club at the same point and he wanted to take the club the way I wanted to do it.
So everything that he’s said, and that Stan has said when I’ve been together with both of them, they’ve always delivered.
“We want to take the club to the next level and to compete really with the top teams. In order to do that, we have to be playing in the Champions League.
“We have to be able to evolve the team, improve our players, improve all departments, generate even more connection with our fans, improve the atmosphere at the Emirates, be able to recruit top, top talent and the best people for this club to drive this project to that level.”
The former Everton midfielder also mentioned that he was given the contract when Arsenal were on a run of three losses.
“The club offered me the new contract when we lost three matches,” the Spaniard revealed. “That doesn’t happen in football. That’s a part of what they think, the conversation I have, the belief that they have in myself, the coaching staff, in what we’re doing.
“The people that we have now owning this football club and leading this football club, I haven’t ever seen it and I just got emotional when I saw it. I just said these guys are serious and they are committed so I better push forward.
“Words and facts are very different things and in football they can be extremely different in relation to results and it’s not the case. They meant something for many months and conversations that we had and they put it in a piece of paper after that day so for me there is not a better way to describe the people we have at the club.”
Arsenal sit in fourth place on the Premier League table, two points ahead of North London rivals Tottenham Hotspur. They will return to the UEFA Champions League for the first time since 2017 if they finish the season in that position.
