{"id":657955,"date":"2025-08-10T05:23:03","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T09:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=657955"},"modified":"2025-08-10T05:23:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T09:23:03","slug":"mikel-arteta-praises-martin-zubimendi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/08\/10\/mikel-arteta-praises-martin-zubimendi\/","title":{"rendered":"Mikel Arteta Praises &#8216;Incredible&#8217; New Signing\u2019s Performance Ahead of Season Opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Despite some incredible performances during the 2024\/25 season, Arsenal ended the season without a major trophy. They ultimately finished a distant second to Liverpool in the Premier League, while losing to the eventual Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain. Arsenal<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">have<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> strengthened during the summer, signing Viktor Gyokeres and Martin Zubimendi <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">and following<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> the club&#8217;s 3-0 victory over Athletic Club, <\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.arsenal.com\/news\/arteta-any-moment-we-can-change-puzzle\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Mikel Arteta<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> had plenty of praise, in particular for <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">the <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">performance <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">of Zubimendi<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\">Mikel Arteta Praises Martin Zubimend&#8217;s Performance Ahead of Arsenal vs Man United<\/h2>\n<h3>Martin Zubimendi Shines in Arsenal vs Athletic Club<\/h3>\n<p>It was a dominant performance against Athletic Club, which saw Viktor Gyokeres, Bukayo Saka and Kai Havertz find the net. Following the game, Arteta reflected on the success of pre-season and the attendances for all the games: \u201cYes, unbelievable,\u201d Mikel said.\u00a0\u201cEverywhere that we&#8217;ve been, it&#8217;s been sold out. They&#8217;ve been with the team throughout the pre-season. Today, again, the energy that they created, the support that they are bringing to the team, to the new players, you feel the excitement.\u00a0You feel the excitement, you feel the energy there and that&#8217;s a really positive thing to have.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow we will review the match, review what we&#8217;ve done in pre-season and make the final tweaks. We&#8217;re very much ready to start the season on Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read More<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/07\/28\/crystal-palace-eze-replacement-arsenal\/\" target=\"_self\">Crystal Palace Identify Eberechi Eze Replacement Amid Arsenal Interest<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m very pleased with the performance, with the way we play as a team, the cohesion, the fluidity, the dynamism and the level of threat that we were able to provide throughout the game. A lot of big individual performances as well and I&#8217;m very pleased with the result and the clean sheet. Very happy with [it all].\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Arteta also praised the opening goal of the game, which saw Martin Zubimendi assist Gyokeres, leaving the Gunners boss praising his new signings, especially the Spaniard: \u201cThe quality of the delivery from Zubi, absolutely top,\u201d he said. \u201cI think he was incredible today, the way he played throughout the game and for Viktor as well to get out that first goal I think is very, very important psychologically.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAgain, he was involved in a lot of very important actions in the game. Kai came in and scored an incredible goal as well.\u00a0So, I&#8217;m very happy with the team today.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Arsenal vs Manchester United<\/h3>\n<p>Attention now turns to August 17, when Arsenal travel to Old Trafford to face their old rivals, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/08\/09\/manchester-united-rasmus-hojlund-departure\/\" target=\"_self\">Manchester United<\/a>. Arteta&#8217;s men will start as the favourites, following this win over Athletic Club in the Emirates Cup.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read More<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/07\/06\/martin-zubimendi-arsenal-reaction-transfer\/\" target=\"_self\">Mikel Arteta Shares Honest Thoughts on \u00a351m Arrival<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Despite the arrival of Benjamin Sesko, Manchester United will find it difficult to deal with an Arsenal squad that looks primed for a big 2025\/26 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite some incredible performances during the 2024\/25 season, Arsenal ended the season without a major trophy. They ultimately finished a distant second to Liverpool in the Premier League, while losing to the eventual Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain. Arsenal\u00a0have strengthened during the summer, signing Viktor Gyokeres and Martin Zubimendi and following the club&#8217;s 3-0 victory [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4106,"featured_media":631994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,28],"tags":[9789,4372,31697],"class_list":["post-657955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-premier-league","category-arsenal","category-transfers","tag-martin-zubimendi","tag-mikel-arteta","tag-viktor-gyokeres"],"modified_by":"Ricky Carroll, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657955"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657958,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657955\/revisions\/657958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}