MIKEL Arteta isn’t about to put his feet up and take a breather during the international break, admitting he has already set his sights on Arsenal’s upcoming fixtures.

While players swap their club colours for their international strips to concentrate on World Cup qualifiers, Arteta is busy planning for what comes next.

And that will be a tough return to domestic action against Liverpool at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday, April 3, quickly followed by another home game five days later against Slavia Prague in the first leg of the Europa League quarter-finals.

“We still have some players here, we still have to train them in the best possible way and then we go to the next match,” said Arteta as he offered up an insight into what a rare two-week break looks like.

“Then I will start to focus on Liverpool and the Europa League, to start to prepare for those games so that when everyone is back, we are ready to go.”

Somewhat poetically describing Arsenal’s erratic form as being like “a team with two faces”, Arteta revealed that goals like the ones his side shipped in Sunday’s 3-3 draw at West Ham were keeping him awake at night.

Especially after the north Londoners found themselves 2-0 down inside 20 minutes at the London Stadium.

But the Gunners boss (pictured) isn’t about to let his players get away with blaming fatigue for such costly casualness.

He said: “I don’t like excuses, honestly.

“If somebody is not fit to play Thursday to Sunday, he needs to say before the game ‘I am not fit’ because on minute one to 10, I’ve been there and you cannot put the blame on that.

“After 60, 70 or 80 minutes, okay I understand because we are human beings. If that had happened at the end, we would’ve been more close to being excused because of that, but at the start of the game? No.”

Reflecting on the number of soft goals Arsenal have given away, Arteta added: “It has happened too many times, too often and at this level you cannot do that because the opponents are so good and the margins are not that big.

“I cannot accept that the team has two phases, it only has one phase which is the top level that we can reach consistently every three days for the whole period of the game. If we are able to do that, then we’ll become a different team.”