Mikel won’t be making promises on Leno return
MIKEL ARTETA denies he has given Bernd Leno assurances on when he will be back in goal for Arsenal but has praised his response to being dropped against Norwich.
Dropping Leno was one of seven changes made by Arteta for the 1-0 win over the Canaries last Saturday as the Gunners picked up their first Premier League points of the season.
Summer signing Aaron Ramsdale was preferred between the posts as he made his league debut for the club after arriving from Sheffield United.
Reports in Germany this week claimed Leno had been told he would be recalled for the derby against Tottenham on September 26 – but Arteta said that was news to him.
‘I don’t know where they (the reports) are coming from but they are ahead of me!’ he joked before tomorrow’s game at Burnley.
‘I think I am the one who picks the team and sometimes I read things I haven’t decided yet.
‘They give me ideas at the most but nothing else because I haven’t made a decision for Saturday – so imagine [if I had] for the north London derby. We had to change something [for Norwich] and Aaron has come here to try to make us better.
‘We needed a result on that day and I decided to play him. That’s all.’
Asked if he had made any assurances to Leno about when he might get another chance, Arteta added: ‘No. That’s what I said to them and I said to the goalkeepers in the last two or three years; that we don’t want to do that.
‘What we want to do is empower performance and ask them all to train, behave and play in the best possible way. How can I guarantee somebody something?
‘It wouldn’t make sense with what we are demanding them to do.
‘So it is on a daily basis – what you did three months ago in football, it doesn’t count. So it is about what you’re going to do today and tomorrow and that’s it.’
There were further suggestions Leno had not reacted well to losing his place in the side, something else Arteta rebuffed.
‘No, that’s not true,’ he said. ‘ He responded, you can be frustrated, but he was top with his team-mates in training, so that is not true.’
I pick the team and I’m reading things I haven’t decided on yet