Published: 11 July, 2013
by STEVE BARNETT

WITH the new season drawing near Mikel Arteta says that the Gunners are determined to make a positive impression from the very start.

The Arsenal first-team squad fly to the Far East today (Thursday) to kick off their Asia Tour 2013. They play their first pre-season match against the Indonesia Dream Team on Sunday, and Arteta is looking forward to experiencing new cultures and to entertaining the fans.

“When it comes to the games, we need to put some good performances in and put on a good show,” he told Arsenal Player. “The fans will be excited and we don’t know when we’re going to get back there. It’s going to be important.

“It’s exciting to go on tour.

“We’re going to see some very different cultures, different countries and we’re going to do a lot of travelling as well.

“Just looking at the tour we had last year and how excited people were to see us in their own countries, I think they deserve us to be 100 per cent involved in that.”

A training camp will run during the Japanese leg of the tour which Arteta believes will be crucial in the long-term as the team step up their preparations for the 2013/14 campaign.

“It’s a big thing because this year we’re going to spend almost three weeks over there so it’s going to be half of our preparation,” he said.

“We know that we’re going to have to do a lot of activities over there but the training has to be quality as well.

“The boys are going to take those four days in Japan to increase the amount of work we do during the day. During the first eight or nine days of the tour, we haven’t got much time to train hard because we’ve got game after game and a lot of travelling as well.”