With the 2022/23 season in its final few days, Mikel Arteta has been reflecting on a campaign filled with huge positives, and assessing what needs to happen over the summer.

“We tried our best, and we made some mistakes that have cost us, but the reality is there’s a team that you have to congratulate, and that’s Manchester City as well as Pep and the coaching staff. Throughout 38 games they’ve been more consistent and when that happens, you have to shake hands, say congratulations, take a lot of the things that you’ve done well over the season, keep them and learn from the others that need to change or improve to get to another level.”

When asked where he felt the key turning point was, Mikel quickly suggested the four-game spell at the start of April which saw us draw against Liverpool, West Ham and Southampton in succession, which mean we headed to the Etihad Stadium for a crunch game between the top two sides in the country out of form.

Our lead was trimmed further following the 4-1 loss against a red-hot City side brimming with confidence. The boss feels that if we were to become champions, we had to beat our nearest rivals in our two league meetings, which may have caused the momentum to swing in our favour.

Looking back on that period, Arteta said: “When you are 2-0 up at Anfield and you draw the game in the 90th minute, and then you got West Ham and you’re 2-0 up after 20 minutes, enjoying complete domination and miss a penalty - you have to win that game. Then you have Southampton and you basically give them two goals and you have to climb a mountain. We could have won it at the end but drew 3–3, so the fourth game against City becomes crucial.

“To be fair, they were much better than us. They raised the level like they did against Real Madrid the other day, and when they play at that level, it’s like ‘wow’. We could not reach it. That psychologically paid a big price on the team.”