Jorginho lifts lid on half-time team talk from Mikel Arteta that inspired Arsenal to stunning comeback win vs Villa
JORGINHO has lifted the lid on Mikel Arteta’s half-time team-talk that helped fuel Arsenal’s comeback against Aston Villa.
The Gunners went in at the break down 2-1, after conceding brilliant goals by Ollie Watkins and Philippe Coutinho either side of a Bukayo Saka strike.
Arteta’s men came out rejuvenated for the second period, and levelled through Oleksandr Zinchenko on the hour mark.
The game then had a frantic finish, with Villa striking the bar at one end, before Jorginho’s shot crashed off the bar and in off the back of Emi Martinez’s head.
Gabriel Martinelli then broke away to make it 4-2 in the dying embers, and Jorginho couldn’t help but credit his new manager after the game.
The Italian told BT Sport: “That’s the Premier League.
“That’s why it’s the best league in the world. It’s just beautiful.
“It’s a very important [win], after the last results we had and the start wasn’t easy. We were not producing our game.
“But we came in at half-time and had a talk, and then we went back to doing the basics that we needed to do, and we changed the game.”
Arteta, 40, also mentioned what was said at the interval.
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He explained: “We showed a lot of character and resilience to get back twice in the game and end up winning it.
“We have to take some lessons from today because especially in the first-half we didn’t do the simple things right.
“But we talked at half-time, [saying] ‘If we raise individual standards and start to deliver what they have to do, we’re going to win this game’.
“In the second-half I think we outplayed them, we created chance after chance, we dominated absolutely the game.
“We needed a magic moment and Jorginho produced it.
“When you want to be at the top, you have to win in many different ways.”
The win saw Arsenal return to the top of the Premier League, with Manchester City subsequently drawing 1-1 at Nottingham Forest.