ARSENAL MANAGER GOT NEW DEAL ON THE BACK OF THREE DEFEATS…

2PM

MIKEL ARTETA hailed Arsenal’s overwhelming support after he pulled off one of football’s most unlikely hat-tricks.

Lose three games and earn yourself a new three-year contract extension.

“Chapeau!” the delighted Gunners’ manager said after putting pen to paper yesterday.

“The club offered me the new contract when we lost three matches,” he added. “That doesn’t happen in football. Hats off to them.”

The loss to Southampton on April 16 – on the back of defeats by Crystal Palace and Brighton – left Arsenal in sixth place.

They were three points behind north London rivals Tottenham, who occupied the last of the four Champions League places. They had an extra game to play, but a vastly inferior goal difference meant that jumping aboard that elusive gravy train was no longer in the club’s hands.

It left Arteta and the players at their lowest ebb, with the manager admitting that the mood was “very down”.

So the club’s next move in opening talks about a new deal came as something of a surprise to Arteta – if one that impressed him.

“That’s a part of what they think,” he said. “The conversations I have, the belief they have in myself, the coaching staff, in what we’re doing, and the people that we have now owning this football club and leading this football club.

“I haven’t ever seen something like that before and I just got emotional when I saw the offer. I just said these guys are serious and they are committed so I better push forward.

“Words and facts are very different things and in football they can be extremely different in relation to results.

“They showed they meant something in the many months and conversations that we had and they put it in a piece of paper after that day.

“So for me there is not a better way to describe the people we have at the club.

“The club was so decisive and committed to do it now and they wanted to bring clarity, starting from ownership, about what we were doing.

“They wanted to show the stability and commitment to the project.” Arteta

admitted his future had become a cause for concern within the camp, with young players, such as Bukayo Saka, below, keen for the manager’s situation to be resolved before they negotiated their own contract extensions.

The Spaniard said: “The players found out this morning. Some of them have been asking me in the past few months because they had questions over their futures. “But it’s not something I like to be talking about. “I want zero distractions about that so, this afternoon, it’s done.

“It’s clear for the future and full focus on Leeds.”