, external<\/span><\/a> this week, the five-time champion said: “I’ve heard a lot of people talking about Arsenal and how they’re playing. I think Arsenal have been brilliant.<\/p>\n“I actually enjoy watching them play. Set-pieces are part of football – why would you not use it?”<\/p>\n
One of Arsenal’s most notable critics has been Brighton manager Fabian Hurzeler, before and after his side’s 1-0 loss to the Gunners earlier this month.<\/p>\n
He revealed on Friday that he and Arteta have had a “good exchange” via text messages, where “he shared his opinion and I shared mine”.<\/p>\n
“That is what football is about, everyone defending their side,” said Hurzeler, who also told Arteta “I have huge respect for everyone at Arsenal”.<\/p>\n
“If they win the Premier League, they definitely deserve it,” added the German.<\/p>\n
Arsenal still have a chance of winning all four major trophies this season and host Everton in the Premier League on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Arteta spent five years as player for Everton under the Toffees’ current manager David Moyes, who also defended Arsenal’s approach.<\/p>\n
Arteta said he has spoken with Moyes “a few times” this season and has “massive gratitude” for the veteran Scottish boss who he called “one of the greatest Premier League managers”.<\/p>\n
“You are making it sound as if it’s a problem because they are good at set-pieces and they are a strong, physical side,” Moyes said. “I don’t see any problem. It’s part of the game.”<\/p>\n
He added: “You have seen Mikel over a few years, he has got dark arts, like we have all had to have at different times because you are desperate for your team to win.<\/p>\n
“You have got to find ways of winning, that’s part of the job. You can play as good as you like, but winning is the thing that really matters.”<\/p>\n
Even if people disagree, there are other ways of ‘winning ugly’ that Premier League champions have used in the past.<\/p>\n
As miraculous as their title win was, Leicester’s football in 2015-16 was not always pretty.<\/p>\n
Ten of their 68 goals came from the penalty spot, they had the fewest shots and touches in the opposition box on record and 14 of their 23 wins were by a single goal (61%).<\/p>\n
And while ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’ is a well-known chant, only five of their 20 wins this season have been by that scoreline – far fewer than the 11 Chelsea eked out in 2004-05 or the 10 that Manchester United achieved in 2008-09.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having said all that, is scoring from set-pieces inherently ugly? Wayne Rooney does not think so. Speaking on The Wayne Rooney Show, external this week, the five-time champion said: “I’ve heard a lot of people talking about Arsenal and how they’re playing. I think Arsenal have been brilliant. “I actually enjoy watching them play. Set-pieces<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}