Every word from Arteta’s pre-Port Vale presser | Press conference | News

Our Carabao Cup journey begins against Port Vale in the third round and Mikel Arteta has been facing the press before our trip to Vale Park.

During his press conference at the Sobha Realty Training Centre, Mikel spoke about his desire to win the competition after we reached the semi-finals in 2024/25, as well as providing an injury update on his squad.

Read our full transcript below:

on Noni Madueke’s injury:

Yes, it looks he’s going to be out for a few weeks. We don’t know yet, we’re probably going to have to scan him next week again. He felt something at the beginning of the match, he tried to carry on, and at half-time, he was too sore, so let’s see.

on if it’s weeks rather than months:

We hope so. As I said, we need to scan him again to see the real extent of the injury, but it doesn’t look too bad.

on how disappointing it is for him:

He was gutted, obviously. Very disappointing to see because he was in such a good state. He looked like a real threat; he was getting some consistency, some flow into the team and he looked like a real threat, so it’s a big miss for us.

on Piero Hincapie’s injury:

He picked up a little groin injury. We’ll have to assess him again in the next few days to see how he goes. There’s been a change of load, and he didn’t really have a pre-season after the surgery that he had. We’ll have to see in the next week or so how he is.

on if there’s a timeframe on it:

No, I think it will be a short time.

on Kai Havertz’s injury:

With Kai, we know that it will be months with him. I don’t know if it can be weeks, you never know because this is Kai and he’s a different specimen. We really miss him. Hopefully, he will be back, and back for the long term as well, so it is very important to look after that knee. So far, he’s progressing pretty well.

on if the injuries are just down to bad luck:

We looked at everything. The one with Noni is bad luck; it’s a very unfortunate incident. With Kai, something similar. With Ben White, it was similar. With Martin [Odegaard], same as all the guys that have been out, very similar, because he damaged his shoulder twice during the same action on the floor, which is very unlikely to happen. With Bukayo, it was more of a muscular injury with the hamstring, maybe something to look more in depth, and we absolutely did that. We try to keep that as low as possible; that’s what we are trying to do.

on being able to give minutes to different players in the Carabao Cup tomorrow:

Yes, it’s a lot of players that are going to take part in that, and they fully deserve the minutes. Kepa, for sure, is one of them. He’s been with us, his attitude, the way he supports us in every aspect of his role in the best possible manner. All this as well, they deserve more minutes than what they’re getting.

on if he’s surprised by the reaction to our approach against Man City:

In football, surprised? I’m not surprised about anything. No, because I don’t read it [the reaction], but I do get told a little bit what the narrative is around it. If you tell me that this is the main one, if I’m surprised, I will be extremely surprised. With my knowledge and my know-how, and how I analyse a football game, it was impossible for anybody to predict such a dominance from Arsenal throughout 96 minutes because it never happened in 17 years of Pep [Guardiola] as a manager. So if the narrative goes somewhere else and we talk about dominance, about something else, how can you be dominant against such a team if you have a handbrake? Dominance and handbrake are two different words, but I accept everything. I will learn more to have a different vision.

on why Myles Lewis-Skelly hasn’t played as much this season so far:

Yes, and sometimes performances of other players as well. You can be at a really good level but somebody can be at a different level, or it’s just that I have the perception at the moment that it’s better to play or start somebody else in the team. It doesn’t mean Myles has done something wrong at all, completely the opposite. So when he has the chance, he has to try to show the level that he’s at, elevate it, and make the decision even harder.

on if it’s a fluid situation regarding where Myles can play:

Yes, fluid. Especially because if you look at the amount of time that Myles defends and attacks in certain spaces, he’s much more a midfielder than a full-back. But there are moments that he needs to be in that position. He can absolutely do it. He’s shown it. He’s done it at the highest level in the Champions League so there’s no question about that.

on when Martin Odegaard might be back and if he needs surgery:

No, no surgery. He’s totally fine. He’s already been training and it will be a matter of days I think.

on how to find the balance of getting Max Dowman minutes while being around the first-team squad:

Well, learning from him, probably. First of all, preparing and having a very good understanding of his new situation and all the things that are different in his life. So we need to change his times, we need to change his education, probably his allocation and where he is with his family. His diet is different, his sleep patterns become different, the training load is different, the amount of information, pressure, and exposure is different. So we have to manage a lot of factors. Into that, a lot of factors, you add a lot of minutes with very different teams as well. We need to be cautious and that’s what we are trying to do in the best possible way to find that balance to keep Max as connected as possible with the first team because he’s undoubtedly a player that can help the first team. But that’s why we need the right mixture of minutes like he did the other day with the under-23s and with England, to have that exposure when he needs to play with us, he’s ready to do that.

on how older players react to getting nutmegged by him:

At the beginning, they responded immediately – kick him! That was the first one, and Max, to be fair, he was excellent, stood up, and got to the next one. You can really take it personally, of someone who was 14 last year, at some point when he was doing certain things to players, and now everybody loves him. You just want to hug him, help him. He’s such a nice boy as well and he’s very much liked by everybody here. It brings responsibility to look after somebody with that talent and make sure we just do what we have to do to make sure we’re given the best chance to exploit his talent, that’s all.

on if Bukayo Saka needs to be eased back in:

He needs minutes and he’s demanding that as well. Obviously, when he’s been out for a while, you just need to get in the rhythm, you need to get that confidence on the pitch and repeat actions and exposure. We will do that, gradually, because he’s been out for a while. But I like what I saw the other day when he came on.

on if we’re looking at using Gabriel Martinelli on the right after his goal against City:

He can, and a lot of the runs that he makes sometimes, as well, are from a central position in relation to what phase of play we are playing and what his starting position is, and actually, his impact has been really, really good for the team.

on if he’s frustrated by the narrative of us ‘not taking the handbrake off’:

No, I was just surprised because when I saw everything and watching it back and all the stats, I was surprised. But I respect everybody’s opinion and if I can see and learn something that I haven’t seen, I’m more than happy to do so. So that’s never an issue. I don’t think that one player makes that. When you see the behaviour of our team, if you’re going to define that with one player playing one position, I understand a collective sport in a completely different way. Then we played Ebz on the right-hand side. Could he play 90 minutes? That’s a question I put to myself because none of you know the load that he can do. So it’s easy to say he could have played with the start, maybe not, because he already played two games from the start and he’s never played as a right attacking midfielder. So that’s another one. A new element for him, but all good.

Copyright 2025 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.