Arteta predicts ‘more to come’ from established players amid Alvarez talk

Mikel Arteta has warned there is plenty more to come from Arsenal’s established stars this season after beginning their Premier League title defence with a convincing victory over Coventry .

A week after dispatching Manchester City by the same scoreline in last week’s Community Shield, goals from Kai Havertz, Bukayo Saka and Martin Ødegaard sealed a comfortable victory for the champions. Arsenal, who unveiled new £55m signing Ezri Konsa before kickoff, have now won 18 of their past 19 games against newly-promoted teams and never looked like stumbling against Frank Lampard’s side.

But while there has been speculation in Spain that Arsenal could still make a move for Atlético Madrid’s Julián Alvarez before the end of the transfer window, Arteta singled out Saka and Ødegaard’s performances against Coventry and believes they are ready to contribute more after two injury-hit seasons.

“The main focus has to be to improve our players, improve the connection between them because they are already so good,” he said. “When we talk about attacking input, last season we missed some of those players for a lot of months, and the team still had the ability to perform and win a lot of matches and when we have them then, that’s a bonus.”

Asked whether Arsenal could be tempted to make a move for Alvarez in the next week, he added: “I’m really happy with the squad that we have and the main focus is to improve the players that we already have because we already have a lot of good things.”

Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus were both absent from the match day squad as Arsenal attempt to offload the Brazil internationals, with any move for Alvarez likely to rest on them leaving. But Arteta was positive about the prospect of having Bruno Guimarães back from a groin injury soon after the £75m midfielder was ruled out of the opener.

“We don’t expect that to be weeks,” he said. “Let’s see how he evolves this week. He didn’t even want to stop. He wanted to carry on. Now we start to understand the character of the player, but I don’t expect that to be a big issue.”

Coventry struggled in their first Premier League game since 2001 after winning the Championship last year but Lampard admitted he was proud of his side’s reaction with many of them playing at this level for the first time.

“We lost the game and we will learn our lessons. Every game won’t look like that,” he said. “Leeds came here last year and lost 5-0 and stayed in the Premier League so I’m not making any early judgments. There are adjustments for us to make and we’ll make them.”