Mikel Arteta has warned his Arsenal squad that they cannot rest on their laurels after winning the FA Cup.
The Gunners defeated Chelsea in the final earlier this month to qualify for next season's Europa League, which they had initially missed out on after finishing eighth in the Premier League.
That FA Cup win salvaged what had otherwise been a difficult campaign for Arsenal, but Arteta has told his squad they must now kick on.
“I have to look at the players, how they come from holidays, how they come after winning, I want to see that reaction,” Arteta told Arsenal Digital.
“You know, are they going to be a little more relaxed because we've done something or are they going to come with 'Okay, this is nothing that we've done. We have to go to the next level, we have to apply ourselves better, we have to improve in a lot of areas and we have to dominate many other aspects of the game that at the moment we cannot control’.
“If that is the mindset, then I am very positive that we will be sitting here in a year's time really happy. But I hope we take that road straight away.
“I am very positive about where we are. I don't know if we are ahead of schedule, obviously if you had told me that we were going to win the cup before we joined then I probably would be happy with that.
“What I am very positive and very passionate and encouraged about is what we can do in the future and if we make the right decisions I am super confident that we can bring the club back to the top.”
Arteta arrived at Arsenal midway through December, with the club struggling for form after Unai Emery had been sacked.
Arteta has now revealed that he felt the culture of the club was wrong when he arrived and it was lacking unity.
The Spaniard managed to rectify that, though, and capped off the season by winning a record 14th FA Cup for Arsenal.
“The first thing we had to do was get back all together with the same agenda and with the same intentions,” he added.
“The foundations have to be really strong in order to create something and we started to do that. I explained my view of how we could do it, we could change things and monitor them daily, but we started to apply some things and they really started to work.
“We had to create the right culture for our club and it has to be an environment that first of all everybody has to respect each other, that we have to work together and we have to express the passion and how we lucky we are to be where we are. That's the first one to start with.
“Without that unity, we cannot drive this massive ship that we have to manage with Arsenal, and the expectations that are involved with the club.”