Arsenal midfielder Mikel Arteta says that he is not enjoying football since he joined the gunners. Arteta completed a move for Everton in £ 10 million deal a few years ago. After several years at Everton, he is slowly establishing himself in the Arsenal first team. At 32 years of age, he offers them wealth of experience that the team has been missing for several years. However, he says that the pressure of playing for a club like Arsenal has made him not love football. Prior to that, he used to love the aspect of playing football.
Arsenal are a club expected to win trophies, but their repeated failures over the last nine years has been putting more pressure on the team and the manager. The team are constantly in the spotlight whether it be success or failure. Even this season, they were under the challenge of winning the Premier league title a few months ago. Now that the title challenge has gone off, they are involved in a challenge for the top four with Everton. In his former club, Arteta was not used to being in such a position because Everton usually were happy with a mediocre place in the table.
Arteta has even gone into saying that the pressure has started affecting his personal life.
“I find it difficult to say ‘I love it’ because I’m constantly putting myself under pressure, there’s always a next target or a ‘we won but we didn’t do a certain thing well’ nagging away at you. And it’s always like that. The fight to switch off gets harder and harder. I just can’t do it. I have long discussions with my wife every time we have a bad result and I constantly think about what we can improve, what we did wrong, what happened in the game,” said Arteta.