Mikel Arteta shares what he said about Leeds to his Arsenal side at half-time

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Mikel Arteta has told Sky Sports (broadcast on 14/2; 18:50) that he warned his Arsenal side at half-time of Sunday’s clash with Leeds United that the Whites are the one team that would not give up at 3-0 down at the Emirates.

The Gunners were lethal during the first-half in North London. They punished a series of Leeds mistakes to take control of the contest.

And any hope of a second-half fightback from the visitors seemed to evaporate two minutes after the break. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang completed his hat-trick after some sublime work from Emile Smith Rowe.

But Leeds refused to go away. Pascal Struijk got one back from a Raphinha corner. And Helder Costa made the game a little more interesting with Leeds’s second with just over 20 minutes remaining.

Arsenal managed to see the game out however. Arteta may have been very relieved to pick up the three points based on what he said to his squad at half-time about their opponents.

“At half-time I said to them there is a team in the Premier League that is never going to give up and is going to throw everything at you. That’s Leeds, because of the character and the belief,” he told Sky Sports.

“And that’s what they’ve done. They threw everything at us. We scored the fourth goal, we could’ve scored more. But they make it hard.”

Leeds did recover from a terrible first-half performance. Arsenal were outstanding at times. But the Whites really shot themselves in the foot on a few occasions also.

The Gunners will take a lot of encouragement from the fact that they did not let any nerves creep in. Having 21 minutes left to defend a 4-2 lead could have been daunting given the way the momentum had swung.

But they stood up to the challenge that Arteta was always wary of facing.