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Mikel Arteta was delighted with the attitude of his Arsenal players as they comfortably made their way into the quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup with a 3-0 win at Preston on Wednesday night.
Coming off a 2-2 draw with Liverpool and ahead of a difficult run of away fixtures against Newcastle, Inter Milan and Chelsea, Arteta made eight changes to his side and was rewarded with a strong performance in which Arsenal always looked in complete control.
Gabriel Jesus scored his first goal since January to put them in front before Ethan Nwaneri – the 17-year-old who put in a stand-out performance – doubled their lead in the 33rd minute.
Substitute Kai Havertz completed the scoring early in the second half and Arsenal can now look forward to meeting Crystal Palace in the last eight.
“(The attitude was) very good,” Arteta said. “We talked about that, about playing with enthusiasm in this game, playing with the right attitude and commitment and they certainly showed that so I’m very happy to be in the quarter-finals.”
Although Arteta made plenty of changes, Nwaneri and debutant goalkeeper Tommy Setford, 18, were the only youngsters in the starting line-up as the manager went with a strong selection.
Jurrien Timber was fit to start despite suffering cramp against Liverpool, but both he and Mikel Merino – who played the full 90 minutes on Sunday – were withdrawn at half-time.
“That was planned,” Arteta said. “We have a lot of issues in the backline, we wanted to share the minutes because we lost (Gabriel), we lost Ben (White) as well on top of the other players.
“We have to make sure that we wanted to be competitive and we have to make sure as well that we protect players because we have a lot of games coming up now.”
With Arsenal already 3-0 up, Arteta sent on Buyako Saka just after the hour. Although that might have been seen as a risk with the game already effectively won, Arteta said it was important to help Saka fully recover from the hamstring injury which kept him out earlier this month.
“He’s in the rhythm, he prefers to have that exposure, he travelled with us so he always says that once I’m here I prefer to play a few minutes,” Arteta said.
“As well (it was) to protect Gabi (Martinelli) because he had a very big impact in the first half, so it worked out well.”