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Arsenal take on Nottingham Forest in the Premier League next, and Oliver Glasner is full of praise for the Gunners.
The Premier League champions have had a good start to the new season, winning five of their first six games in the league quite comfortably.
Against Forest on Sunday, Arsenal will go into the game as the favourites again, and they should realistically secure a comfortable win, despite their dodgy recent record at the City Ground.
Glasner knows he has a huge task ahead of him, and he has showered the Gunners and their manager with praise.
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Arsenal have come a long way since Mikel Arteta first took charge of the club.
The Gunners were in a real mess back in 2019, and the Kroenkes took a major risk by giving the job to someone who had never been a manager before.
That gamble looks like a masterstroke now, as Arteta has turned Arsenal into one of the best clubs in the world – not just tactically but through the mentality he has instilled as well.
That seems to impress Oliver Glasner more than anything else, and the Nottingham Forest boss heaped praise on it in his press conference.
He said, as relayed on Beanyman Sports: “It’s a huge credit to Mikel Arteta and to Arsenal. It’s now a team that has been built over years. And always, at the beginning, finding a core and then always adding the right pieces.
“And it’s not just the quality; it’s also the mentality, how they’re playing. I think in every single game this season, they were outrunning the opposition, and this is, it’s incredible. So the effort, the mindset Mikel created there is incredible, I think, and this makes it so tough to play against them.
“And you see it from every single player. And of course, they have so many world-class players, so they can react from the bench. It was the second consecutive game where the players who came on had a huge impact, and this shows the quality, but also shows the mindset they have.”
One of Arteta’s many non-negotiables at Arsenal is work ethic. The Gunners boss demands 110 per cent from every player in every game, and that is very evident.
In the entire Premier League so far this season, the North Londoners have covered more distance than any other side: 716.2 kilometres. That’s an average of 119.36 kilometres every 90 minutes.
What makes that stat even more impressive is that not a single Arsenal player features in the top 10 for individual distance covered across the league – overall as well as in any one game. (Premier League website)
That shows the workload is being shared across the whole team, which is why it is no surprise at all that many are backing Arsenal to retain their Premier League title again this season.