Arsenal will return to Champions League tonight after been missing out in several years and Mikel Arteta’s has an advice to the debutant in the competition not to be panic the way he was.
Only 11 of the squad have played Champions League football before, with Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice set to make their competition bows.
Arteta was in their position as a teenager, playing for Paris Saint-Germain against AC Milan at the San Siro.
Arsenal are hosting PSV Eindhoven in their first appearance in the competition for six years.
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Arteta said:
“I went from playing in the second division [in Spain] and a week later I was playing with PSG in the San Siro, looking at [Paolo] Maldini, [Alessandro] Costacurta — and I was scared.
“I was in the tunnel looking at them, they all looked immaculate and I was just a 17-year-old boy [thinking], ‘I don’t know if I am ready for this!’
“The lesson probably is that you feel like this, [but] once you are on the pitch, just do what you do every single day and treat it in a natural way. Go for it, like we always do.”
Arteta, however, is wary about underestimating PSV, who beat the Gunners last season in the Europa League.
He continues:
“They haven’t lost a game [this season] and they have won the majority of them”
“And they are used to winning like every other team that’s in the Champions League. It will be a really tough test, I’m sure about that.
“We are used to playing top opposition every week in the Premier League and again we’re going to have a top side fighting against us.
It’s a really big thing to be qualifying in this Premier League for the Champions League.
“We earned it last year and this season we’re going to have fight really, really hard to try to earn it again, that’s for sure.
We don’t want to stop here — that is for sure. That is the aim, to continue to be better.”
Arsenal are favourites going into tonight’s game and they are also expected to top a group that contains Lens and Sevilla.
