Mikel Arteta denies Arsenal were lucky in win over West Ham

Mikel Arteta refused to accept his side were lucky to beat West Ham.

Quite right too.

This new Arsenal make their own luck. This well-drilled Gunners side inspire that old quote from golfing legend Gary Player: “The more I practice, the luckier I get.”

This was the kind of game the Gunners would have lost or even drawn last season under Unai Emery. This Arsenal graft. This Arsenal has character. This Arsenal never stops believing.

That’s what marks the FA Cup holders down as top four contenders this season. The disbelievers can scoff all they want. Chelsea and Spurs may have comparable options going forward but few teams achieve their objectives without a good defence – and Arteta has sorted Arsenal’s out.

“I think you have to earn luck,” he said. “People who are lazy, who don’t work, who don’t put their passion into their work – I don’t think they can get lucky.”

Too right. This may have been Arsenal’s worst performance under the Spaniard for some time but they squeaked through on the fundamentals. A basic belief in what their manager wants them to do.

They aren’t yet perfect. Far from it. But if winning as ugly as they did here leads them to a League Cup (they play Leicester on Wednesday) another FA Cup, the Europa League or even a top four place, few supporters of an Arsenal persuasion will mind.

Arteta won’t, of course, be drawn on whether his Gunners are in the mix for any of those successes.

Instead he paid tribute to Alexandre Lacazette and Eddie Nketiah with the pair stepping up to the plate on a rare occasion that star man Pierre-Emerick Aubamayang failed to find the scoresheet.

Have Arsenal learned how to ‘win the hard way’ under Arteta? Have your say here.

Even if referee Michael Oliver – or VAR – had penalised Gabriel Magalhaes for handball as Victor Lindelof had been up at Manchester United hours earlier, you’d have backed Arsenal to find the goals to come out on top.

“We do need to share the goals much better,” Arteta continued. “We need to produce as a team if we are going to fight with the top teams in this country.

“If it’s one player then they are not going to make it. They all have to take responsibility.”

Before this hard-fought win, Arsenal had been beaten in their opening Premier League home game in five of the last nine seasons. One of those defeats came against West Ham in 2015.

For much of this game it looked as though the Gunners stars had perhaps celebrated too much after Aubameyang’s decision to finally commit his future to the club.

Michael Antonio levelled on the stroke of half time and West Ham were unlucky not to take all three when Tomas Soucek hit the bar deep into the second half.

After the win, however, Arteta paid tribute to Aubameyang and revealed Arsenal are trying to ensure they are never again in the position they’d placed themselves by allowing their star striker’s contract to run down with just 12 months left.

“We will try to put – we already have in place – a plan to avoid this circumstance,” said Arteta.

“The reality is that two or three parties need to agree something at the same time and that’s sometimes not possible for different reasons. But as much as you can you want to avoid these situations.”

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