By james art After a 2-2 draw with Liverpool and ahead of a difficult run of away games 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 full control.
Gabriel Jesus scored his first goal since January to put them ahead before Ethan Nwaneri – the 17-year-old’s outstanding performance – doubled their lead in the 33rd minute.
Substitute Kai Havertz scored early in the second half and Arsenal can now look forward to a meeting with Crystal Palace in the last 16.
“(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 it, so I’m very happy to be in the quarter-finals.”
Although Arteta made many 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.
Jurien Timber was set to start despite suffering from cramp against Liverpool, but both he and Mikel Merino – who played the full 90 minutes on Sunday – were withdrawn at half-time.
“It was planned,” Arteta said. “We have a lot of problems in the back line, we wanted to share the minutes because we lost (Gabriel), we lost Ben (White) as well as the other players.
“We’ve got to make sure we want to be competitive and we’ve got to make sure we protect the players because we’ve got a lot of games coming up now.”
With Arsenal already 3-0 up, Arteta brought on Buyako Saka just after the hour mark. While that could be seen as a risk with the game already won, Arteta said it was important to help Saka fully recover from the injury that ruled him out earlier this month.
“He’s in rhythm, he prefers to have that exposure, he traveled with us so he always says that once I’m here, I’d rather play a few minutes,” Arteta said.
“Also (it was) to protect Gabi (Martinelli) because he had a very big impact in the first half, so it worked out well.”