Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Sport
Simon Collings

Arsenal director Josh Kroenke confident of future success with hope players learn from top-four failure

Arsenal director Josh Kroenke believes the club are “poised for future success” because the squad will have learned from their painful experiences last season.

Arsenal were on course to qualify for the Champions League last season but back-to-back defeats by Tottenham and Newcastle derailed them and they finished fifth in the Premier League.

Kroenke believes that disappointment will stand them in good stead as they bid to return to the Champions League this season.

“The club is really coming together,” Kroenke said in Amazon Prime Video’s documentary All or Nothing: Arsenal.

“And I think we are poised for future success because of the experiences a lot of these players have gained along the way.”

The dramatic final episodes of the docuseries also feature Mikel Arteta’s furious response to his Arsenal players losing away to Newcastle, a game which effectively ended their top-four ambitions.

“It does not matter what I say. It does not matter what you say. Now it’s too late,” Arteta said.

“They were 10,000 times better than us today, in everything. We did not earn the right to play, we did not win a f****** duel, we didn’t win a second ball, we were horrible with the f****** ball and we had no organisation, we had nothing. Nothing.

“So now shut your mouth and eat it. We could have conceded eight goals. If you see the chances you will cry. You will cry at the way that we have competed. Not the way we have competed, we did not compete at all in the game.

Arsenal lost two of their final three games to see Spurs leapfrog them into fourth. / Arsenal FC via Getty Images

“It is f***** embarrassing to come here the way we have done it. Embarrassing. What happened today is f****** unacceptable and if you accept something like this, you live in a different world.”

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.