For Arteta, it won’t matter that his side are not producing free-flowing football – the Gunners just want to get over the line and lift a trophy this season.
They are having to produce results without a number of key players, who are injured. Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard, Jurrien Timber and Riccardo Calafiori were unavailable to play against Sporting.
Declan Rice did play, despite being unwell.
And now there is fresh concern for the top of the table clash with Manchester City on Sunday, as winger Noni Madueke limped off with a knee injury.
When Arteta was asked if he sees the physical strain on his players at the moment, he said: “Yes, but when I see them track back when we lose the ball, the habits that they have, it’s just amazing.
“There is a reason why we are the only English team in the competition, because this league and this schedule takes the hell out of you and it’s very difficult to do what we’ve done.
“We are not perfect, we need to improve things, that’s for sure, we recognise that. But there’s value in what these players have done because they deserve it.”
Former Manchester City and QPR defender Nedum Onuoha told BBC Sport: “The fact that they are in their second consecutive Champions League semi-final is huge. Their performance itself wasn’t perfect, but they just wanted to be in that next round, and that’s exactly where they are.
“On a different day, maybe they would create more chances, and perhaps they would actually score more goals. They didn’t create very much, but they are still in the last four.”
Onuoha referenced words from captain Rice, who said Arsenal just wanted to “go one step further”.
“They will look at this game and the things they could have done better, but the fact is there are plenty of clubs around Europe who aren’t in their position now who would be absolutely delighted to be there,” he said.
“It certainly wasn’t a statement performance like some teams around Europe have done in this last couple of matchdays, however Arsenal still have shown they have just as good a chance as everyone else.
“We’ve seen a Real Madrid side, for example, that have scored four goals across two ties and have been knocked out.
“Arsenal, they only needed one, so you can give them credit for the two clean sheets they’ve had across the two ties and that’s what they needed to be in this particular moment.”
The Ducks held their annual fan appreciation day Sunday, handing out thousands of gifts, from a new car to team jerseys and gift cards. But the one prize the Ducks’ long-suffering fans really wanted, a playoff berth, remained just out of reach.
Needing a win to clinch a postseason berth for the first time since 2018, the Ducks lost a sloppy 4-3 overtime decision to the Vancouver Canucks, the NHL’s worst team, leaving them a point shy of the playoffs with two games to play. The loss was the seventh in eight games for the Ducks, who have tumbled from first to third in the Pacific Division standings and may now have to settle for a wild-card berth.
So they’ll hit the road Monday for their final two games of the regular season needing one point from games in Minnesota and Nashville. The Ducks could also back into the playoffs if Nashville losses either of its final two games.
“We haven’t clinched anything yet,” captain Radko Gudas said. “With two games to play, there’s still a lot of work to do, 120 minutes to give it our all and make that push.”
“We just can’t be satisfied with what we’re at right now,” coach Joel Quenneville agreed. “We didn’t make it easy on ourselves, that’s for sure.”
The Ducks have already assured themselves of their first winning record since 2017-18 but the playoffs have been the Holy Grail the team has been chasing since then. And it appeared within reach until Marco Rossi scored on a power play with less than 11 seconds left in the extra period, silencing a sellout crowd that had repeatedly peppered the Ducks with rhythmic chants of “We want playoffs!”
“I loved it,” Quenneville said of the chant. “I wanted to complete that wish tonight.”
And it looked as if that would happen given the way the Ducks started, with Cutter Gauthier opening the scoring with the first of two goals 3:41 into a feisty and physical first period that was interrupted by seven penalties and two fights.
But Vancouver got the next three scores, taking a 3-1 lead when Brock Boeser intercepted a sloppy Leo Carlsson pass intended for John Carlson in Vancouver’s defensive end, then outskated Carlson the other way before lifting the puck over goaltender Lukas Dostal less than five minutes into the final period.
The shorthanded goal seemed to wake the slumbering Ducks, with Gauthier scoring on a power play 37 seconds later to halve the lead and become the first Duck with 40 goals in a season since Corey Perry in 2013-14.
“It’s a huge milestone and something I’m very proud of,” Gauthier said. “But that’s not why I’m playing hockey. I’m playing to win games and eventually win a Stanley Cup.”
Carlsson then evened things at 3-3 on a spectacular goal less than two minutes later, backhanding the puck over Canucks goalie Nikita Tolopilo while skating away from the crease for his 29th goal of the season.
“It was kind of a dagger when they score a shorthanded goal on us,” Gauthier said. “It’s supposed to be the opposite way. But I thought we responded really well, obviously tying it back up.”
The Ducks couldn’t keep it there, however, with Chris Kreider taking a slashing penalty with 2:07 left in overtime, giving Vancouver an extra skater. Dostal had kept the Ducks in the game, making seven saves in the extra period, including five huge stops on the power play, but he couldn’t stop Rossi on the final shot, one which sent the Ducks’ fans home disappointed and eager to end to the second-longest playoff drought in the NHL.
“They’ve been hungry to get back in the playoffs over these last seven years,” said Gauthier, who was in junior high school in Michigan the last time the Ducks played in the postseason. “They’re excited for it, we’re excited for it. We fell short tonight but we had a great opportunity to go on this road trip and get some get points.”
Actually just one point — the one they left on the ice Sunday — will be enough.
Donald Trump wanted only the pretty ones, his employees said.
After the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes opened for play in 2005, its world-famous owner didn’t stop by more than a few times a year to visit the course hugging the coast of the Pacific.
When Trump did visit, the club’s managers went on alert. They scheduled the young, thin, pretty women on staff to work the clubhouse restaurant — because when Trump saw less-attractive women working at his club, according to court records, he wanted them fired.
“I had witnessed Donald Trump tell managers many times while he was visiting the club that restaurant hostesses were ‘not pretty enough’ and that they should be fired and replaced with more attractive women,” Hayley Strozier, who was director of catering at the club until 2008, said in a sworn declaration.
Initially, Trump gave this command “almost every time” he visited, Strozier said. Managers eventually changed employee schedules “so that the most attractive women were scheduled to work when Mr. Trump was scheduled to be at the club,” she said.
A similar story is told by former Trump employees in court documents filed in 2012 in a broad labor relations lawsuit brought against one of Trump’s development companies in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
The employees’ declarations in support of the lawsuit, which have not been reported in detail until now, show the extent to which they believed Trump, now the Republican presidential nominee, pressured subordinates at one of his businesses to create and enforce a culture of beauty, where female employees’ appearances were prized over their skills.
A Trump Organization attorney, in a statement to The Times, called the allegations “meritless.”
In a 2009 court filing, the company said that any “allegedly wrongful or discriminatory acts” by its employees, if any occurred, would be in violation of company policy and were not authorized.
Employees said in their declarations that the apparent preference for attractive women came from the top.
“Donald Trump always wanted good looking women working at the club,” said Sue Kwiatkowski, a restaurant manager at the club until 2009, in a declaration. “I know this because one time he took me aside and said, ‘I want you to get some good looking hostesses here. People like to see good looking people when they come in.’ ”
As a result, Kwiatkowski said, “I and the other managers always tried to have our most attractive hostesses working when Mr. Trump was in town and going to be on the premises.”
Trump has struggled to win the support of female voters as he seeks the nation’s highest office. In the past, he has insulted women’s appearances, sometimes calling them “pigs” or “dogs.”
Trump’s record with women got renewed attention after this week’s presidential debate, when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton told the story of a former beauty pageant winner who said Trump called her “Miss Piggy” when she gained weight.
Trump has previously defended himself by saying he has “great respect for women” and “will do far more for women” than Clinton. He has also said that “all are impressed with how nicely I have treated women.”
As part of the lawsuit over a lack of meal and rest breaks at Trump’s golf club about 30 miles south of downtown Los Angeles — his largest real estate holding in Southern California — several employees said managers staffed Trump’s clubhouse restaurant with attractive young women rather than more experienced employees in order to please Trump.
The bulk of the lawsuit was settled in 2013, when golf course management, without admitting any wrongdoing, agreed to pay $475,000 to employees who had complained about break policies. An employee’s claim that she was fired after complaining about the company’s treatment of women was settled separately; its terms remain confidential.
A public relations firm working for the Trump campaign referred questions about the lawsuit to one of the attorneys who represented the Trump National Golf Club in the case.
“We do not engage in discrimination of any kind and have always complied with all wage laws, including by providing our employees with meal and rest breaks,” said the attorney, Jill Martin, assistant general counsel for the Trump Organization.
The former employees’ statements primarily describe the club’s work culture from the mid- to late 2000s. The Times spoke at length to one of the ex-employees, who described in detail the allegations about workplace culture. The person declined to be quoted by name, citing a fear of being sued.
In their sworn declarations, some employees described how Trump, during his stays in Southern California, made inappropriate and patronizing statements to the women working for him.
On one visit, Trump saw “a young, attractive hostess working named Nicole … and directed that she be brought to a place where he was meeting with a group of men,” former Trump restaurant manager Charles West said in his declaration.
“After this woman had been presented to him, Mr. Trump said to his guests something like, ‘See, you don’t have to go to Hollywood to find beautiful women,’” West said. “He also turned to Nicole and asked her, ‘Do you like Jewish men?’”
One of the few older people on the wait staff who served Trump, Maral Bolsajian, said she was “uncomfortable” when he visited, calling his behavior toward her “inappropriate.”
“Although I am a grown woman in my forties, Mr. Trump regularly greeted me with expressions like ‘how’s my favorite girl?’” Bolsajian said in a declaration. “Later, after he learned (by asking me) that I was married — and happily so — he regularly asked, ‘are you still happily married?’ whenever he saw me.”
Trump also asked her to pose for photos with him, said Bolsajian, who added that she felt she “had little recourse given that Donald Trump is not only the head of the company but also one of the most powerful, well-known people in the United States.”
Bolsajian said, “In short, I consistently found Mr. Trump to be overly familiar and unprofessional.”
The lawsuit focused on the course’s high-pressure work culture. Employees said they were not allowed to take the breaks required under California law.
The statements about Trump’s preference for young, attractive employees were filed in support of a separate claim for retaliation, lodged after former restaurant host Lucy Messerschmidt, then 45, contended that she had been fired for complaining about age discrimination.
Jeffrey W. Cowan, a Santa Monica attorney who represented the employees in the lawsuit, said the case targeted Trump’s development company, VH Property Corp., but “the evidence certainly suggested” that the club’s work culture flowed from Trump.
Donald Trump takes an unfinished pathway at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes in 2005.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times )
Although Trump was mostly absent from the course he purchased in 2002, workers said his company maintained a rigorous work environment that often left workers exhausted.
Employees said managers urged them to hurry through brief meal breaks, sometimes even expressing impatience with bathroom breaks.
“My manager insisted that because this was Trump’s golf course, it had to be top-notch,” one employee said in a declaration. “He was concerned that if Trump observed employees eating or resting, Trump would not be pleased.”
Another employee said his manager “seemed obsessed with the fact that this was Donald Trump’s golf course,” believing that “Mr. Trump wouldn’t like it if he saw employees sitting around because he would think the golf course was inefficient and overstaffed.” A valet described a stretch where “someone got fired every week.”
One busboy said in a declaration that he took up smoking so that he would have an excuse for going outside for a break.
In response, Trump’s company filed declarations from more than a dozen other employees who said they regularly were offered lunch breaks of at least 30 minutes for every five-hour shift, and were counseled by managers if they didn’t take them.
Lili Amini, general manager, said in a declaration that the company implemented a firm policy about such breaks in 2009.
Employees said managers started instituting breaks after the class-action lawsuit was filed.
The Trump National Golf Club on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 2005.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times )
Female employees said they faced additional pressures.
Strozier, the former catering director, said Vincent Stellio — a former Trump bodyguard who had risen to become a Trump Organization vice president — approached her in 2003 about an employee that Strozier thought was talented.
Stellio wanted the employee fired because she was overweight, Strozier said in her legal filing.
“Mr. Stellio told me to do this because ‘Mr. Trump doesn’t like fat people’ and that he would not like seeing [the employee] when he was on the premises,” wrote Strozier, who said she refused the request. (Stellio died in 2010.)
A year later, Mike van der Goes — a golf pro who had been promoted to be Trump National’s general manager — made a similar request to fire the same overweight employee, Strozier said.
“Mr. van der Goes told me that he wanted me to do this because of [the employee’s] appearance and the fact that Mr. Trump didn’t like people that looked like her,” Strozier wrote.
When Strozier protested, Van der Goes returned a week later “and announced he had a plan of hiding [the employee] whenever Mr. Trump was on the premises,” Strozier wrote.
West, who worked as a restaurant manager at the club until 2008, wrote that Van der Goes ordered him “to hire young, attractive women to be hostesses.” West also said Van der Goes insisted that he “would need to meet all such job applicants first to determine if they were sufficiently pretty.”
Van der Goes, who worked at the club until 2008, did not respond to requests for comment, though he defended Trump in a February interview with the Santa Clarita Gazette.
“He’s not a racist. He’s not a bigot,” said Van der Goes, who called Trump “an astute businessman and a marketing genius.”
Employees said several women quit or were fired because they were perceived as unattractive.
A server, John Marlo, recalled seeing a co-worker crying in 2007. The woman had wanted to be promoted to server.
“She told me that she was upset because a manager had told her that she couldn’t be a server because of she had acne on her face,” Marlo said in a declaration. “According to her, she was qualified for the job and wanted it, but couldn’t get it solely because of her acne.”
The woman quit soon after, Marlo wrote.
Messerschmidt, the employee who said she was fired in retaliation for complaining about age discrimination, said in 2008 that one of her managers, Brian Wolbers, changed her schedule to give her time off during one of Trump’s visits because Trump “likes to see fresh faces” and “young girls.”
Wolbers did not respond to a request for comment.
Gail Doner, who worked as a food server from 2007 to 2011, wrote that she was 60 and had often been frustrated by the inefficiency of the restaurant’s young, inexperienced hostesses, who “usually were not competent but were kept anyway.”
“The hostesses that were the youngest and the prettiest always got the best shifts,” Doner wrote.
Meanwhile, Doner — who had 20 years of experience working for wine vendors, and was at “the top of [her] game” while working for Trump National — said managers slowly cut back her shifts until they stopped scheduling her at all, “effectively firing [her].”
“It did not appear to me that this reduction in shifts was happening to any of the younger, more attractive female food servers,” Doner said. She added: “I chose not to fight to get my job back because by that point I was fed up with the toxic environment and the way that I was treated.”
