Arsenal offered me new contract following three straight defeats, reveals Arteta

Mikel Arteta has revealed that Arsenal offered him a new contract after a run of three straight losses, after the Spaniard signed a deal that will take him through to 2025.

The former midfielder replaced Unai Emery at the helm at the Emirates Stadium in late 2019, and won the FA Cup in his first season in charge, before bouncing back from a second-season struggle to move them within touching distance of a Champions League spot this year.

The timing of the announcement has raised suggestions that the Gunners were waiting to confirm their return to Europe before formally tabling the deal - but now, Arteta has revealed that he had been on a losing run when the contract was first offered.

"The club offered me the new contract when we lost three matches," the Spaniard revealed. "That doesn’t happen in football. That’s a part of what they think, the conversation I have, the belief that they have in myself, the coaching staff, in what we’re doing.

"The people that we have now owning this football club and leading this football club, I haven’t ever seen it and I just got emotional when I saw it. I just said these guys are serious and they are committed so I better push forward.

"Words and facts are very different things and in football they can be extremely different in relation to results and it’s not the case. They meant something for many months and conversations that we had and they put it in a piece of paper after that day so for me there is not a better way to describe the people we have at the club."

Having finished his playing career at the Emirates Stadium, as part of Arsene Wenger's FA Cup-winning squads of 2013-14 and 2014-15, there was an immediate romance to Arteta's return when he arrived in December 2019 to take