Aaron Ramsdale reveals Mikel Arteta showed Arsenal players their reaction to Newcastle’s crushing defeat last season from the All or Nothing documentary – insisting it gave them ‘extra motivation’ to win
Aaron Ramsdale revealed that Mikel Arteta used footage from last season’s defeat at Newcastle to fuel this ‘revenge’ mission that keeps Arsenal’s title hopes alive.
Martin Odegaard’s long range strike and Fabian Schar own goal secured a 2–0 win at St James’ Park.
A year ago, a defeat here cost Arsenal a Champions League place and sparked a furious tirade from their manager.
It was all captured in Amazon’s All Or Nothing series, but goalkeeper Ramsdale said: “It wasn’t mentioned until the meeting before we left the hotel – the manager showed us a clip from the documentary last year, showed us all our seeing faces and staff included showed how hurt we felt. We had a burning desire that today would not be the same again.’
He added: “We’re fighting Man City to do something special, I think it gave us that little bit extra when we had to dig deep.”
Arsenal closed the gap on Premier League leaders Man City with a 2-0 win over Newcastle
Aaron Ramsdale has revealed that they used last season’s loss to the Magpies as motivation
Mikel Arteta’s X-rated rant against his Arsenal players was revealed in All or Nothing: Arsenal
Arteta explained his thinking, insisting afterwards, “We had to feel it. It wasn’t enough to talk about it, we had to feel it, see it, recognize our faces… that feeling that we hadn’t done enough that day, we had to rectify that.’
The word was pain and then the desire for revenge. I think they had that in their stomachs today.’
“If you have the emotions we had in that dressing room last year, you have to feel them again, realize how mean they are and then find a way to approach the game differently because the demands would be different than last year.” year. The lads did a great job on that, so I’m really proud of them.’
The result means that Arsenal are now just one point behind Manchester City – albeit having played a game more. They have three games left – starting against Brighton on Sunday.
Arsenal were given an early reprieve when VAR referee Chris Kavanagh helped reverse a penalty decision against Jakub Kiwior.
Until then, Newcastle had the lead, but Odegaard scored minutes after the let-off. “That could have changed the course of the game,” Arteta admitted.
Eddie Howe, meanwhile, grew frustrated as his side failed to take their chances.
“It was one of those days when it didn’t work out for us,” said the Newcastle boss.
“I don’t think there’s time for negativity to creep into my psychology. I am proud of the players. It was a high quality game, it was open but just lacked that X factor.’
The defeat meant Newcastle missed the chance to cement their top four place and Howe hinted that he was unhappy with the way Kavanagh allowed Arsenal to slow play.
“There were a lot of breaks in the game, which was very frustrating for us. We need to look at what we can control – that’s the referee’s job, but we need to look at our chances and maybe defend for the goals.’
