Arteta: Arsenal 'loved the mission' in first Anfield win since 2012

Mikel Arteta said his players "loved the mission" of winning at Liverpool for the first time in 14 years as he hailed Sunday's "historic" 1-0 victory at Anfield. Kai Havertz's 16th-minute strike was enough to secure a narrow win in a hard-fought game which sent the Gunners three points clear at the top of the Premier League ahead of Manchester City. Liverpool put Arsenal under huge pressure after falling behind, but the visitors kept them at bay with a more controlled second-half display and the Reds ended without registering a shot on target for the first time ever in a Premier League home game. Arsenal had lost on eight of their last 13 league games and kept just one clean sheet in 27 previous league visits to Anfield before Sunday. "[They are] just loving the mission," said Arteta. "And the mission was something that we didn't accomplish in 14 years. There were reasons for that. Some of them were psychological problems. Some of them were related to the quality that we showed on the pitch, certain moments or decisions. "And we knew that we need to nail absolutely all of them. And we're going to have to navigate through periods that we're going to have to suffer because they are extremely good at doing that and creating those vertical attacks, those chaos moments for almost nothing. "You really need to enjoy that. If you don't, there will be a moment they will switch up and they will punish you. And yeah, I think the way we competed and played and the chances that we generated as well, it was really impressive. So I'm really happy." Arsenal were dumped out of the Carabao Cup by League Two side Fleetwood Town in midweek, but responded with a defiant display to extend "We're extremely proud of what the team, the players, everybody's done especially in the conditions that we arrived to this game, where we were after the defeat against Liverpool, it looks like the end of the world," Arteta said. "It looks like, 'yeah, what are we doing?' And then you have to pick yourself up and understand that this is a beautiful part of this game. "It can take you to really bad places, but four days later you have the opportunity to do something really historic and we've done it."