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Gabriel Martinelli says Arsenal will go to Newcastle in Wednesday night’s Carabao Cup semi-final second leg looking to “score three, four, five” after the confidence boost of Sunday’s 5-1 Premier League win over Manchester City. Arsenal trail 2-0 from the first leg but intend to channel the emotion of a statement victory against City, which took in crowing at the discomfort of their rivals – especially that of Erling Haaland.
The City striker angered Arsenal after the 2-2 draw between the clubs at the Etihad Stadium last September when he clashed with Gabriel Magalhães and Myles Lewis-Skelly – and told Mikel Arteta to “stay humble”. So we saw Gabriel screaming in Haaland’s face after Arsenal had put the ball in the City net. We saw Lewis-Skelly mimic Haaland’s “Zen” celebration after he scored for 3-1, and caption an Instagram picture of the pose with: “Keep it humble.” And we heard the Emirates Stadium song selector play out at full-time with Kendrick Lamar’s Humble.
Martinelli was calm and genuinely humble as the dust settled. The Arsenal winger made the point, as his teammate Declan Rice had done, that Lewis-Skelly “for sure, respects Erling a lot”. And yet the conviction was unmistakably there. The win over City extended Arsenal’s unbeaten run in the league to 14 games and was surely one of the most significant of Arteta’s tenure.
“We know our qualities,” Martinelli said. “It’s not because we lost 2-0 to Newcastle in the last game – we are going to go there just to play now. We are going to go there to win the game and to score three, four, five. Let’s see. It is going to be another battle and we know how difficult it is to play there. But we have an amazing team and we trust ourselves. We have full confidence in our squad.”
Haaland was never going to stay silent in the face of everything thrown at him, even if he kept a lid on his celebrations when he equalised for 1-1. After the match, he showed Gabriel the gold champions badge on the sleeve of his shirt. Haaland’s father, Alfie, would mock Arsenal’s lack of silverware under Arteta, posting on Instagram: “This team that wins everything. Ehhhhh, not.” Arsenal have won one major trophy under Arteta – the 2020 FA Cup – which adds to the pressure on the Newcastle tie.
Martinelli was asked about the increasingly bitter rivalry with City. “That’s two teams that want to win the championship, so that’s a fight,” he said. “We tried our best, they tried their best. We have to win duels to win these games and that’s why the game becomes hard work.”
