In his statement, Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta, said, the Gunners are “going pretty well” in their attacking as they gear up for the game at home against French Ligue 1 side, Lille, on Tuesday night.
The Spaniard also released updates on arsenal.com on injured players, Piero Martin Hincapie and Martin Zubimendi, saying, following scans, they will be allotted a “timeframe” for how long they will be missing in action for the Club.
Arsenal will welcome Lille for the League Phase match of the Uefa Champions League 2026/27 on Tuesday 13 October, 2026 at Emirates Stadium in London at 20:00 (WAT).
At his pre-match press conference, when asked about former Gunners striker, Olivier Giroud, being “underrated” at the Club, the Spanish manager answered, the French forward was neither “underrated for sure” by his teammates, nor by former manager, Arsene Wenger.
Giroud will be fielding for the French top flight side against the Gunners, and Arteta said, the former France player was his teammate during his playing days, describing him as a “great character and a great person to have around the dressing room”.
At his pre-Lille presser, Arteta said:
On Hincapie…
“We had a training session planned after the game for the players that didn’t have enough minutes to give everybody the recovery day on Sunday, and to get everybody in the right rhythm. In two very unfortunate actions, we lost two players, and yeah, not great.”
On Zubimendi…
“Yes; we need to assess them today. They have further scans to see where they are, and they will have a timeframe for how long they’ll be out.”
On the win over Leeds United…
“Many positives from the game; the way we reacted, we managed to turn around the game in a really difficult context. Really impressive the way we started the game really well as well…”
On attacking…
“I think it’s going pretty well. I think the way we have finished the actions probably is something else. But I think we’re certainly getting in some great, great, great positions. We need to be more clinical now to finish more actions.”
On playing against Giroud…
“We were teammates. First of all, a great character and a great person to have around the dressing room, and then the players. He came here and he really impacted the team in a very different way, a completely different profile than we were used to.”
On Giroud being underrated at Arsenal…
“Not by his teammates for sure or Arsene [Wenger] in this case. I don’t know the rest. But he was extremely intelligent first and he was really, really a handful. Every time you had him on the pitch, you had a massive threat inside the box. He was very smart. He was so good at connecting with other players as well and his work rate was phenomenal, so certainly not [underrated] by us.”
On his message to players after losing the last UCL final…
“That you’re going to have to earn the right to get in that position again. We know how tough it is and how many times we’ve done it in the history of our club.”
Heading into the contest, Arsenal are second in the Premier League standings with fifteen (15) points, three (3) points trailing Manchester City, while, Lille are also second on the Ligue 1 table with thirteen (13) points, one (1) point behind toppers, AS Monaco.
