PIERS MORGAN admits he “fan-girled” Mikel Arteta after bumping into him at a glitzy London restaurant.
Arsenal fan Morgan was sat with Hollywood legend Joan Collins at the nose-bleedingly expensive Carbone in Mayfair, where diners can expect to pay £15 for broccoli, £126 for a steak and £29,500 for a top-end bottle of wine.
Another acting hall-of-famer, George Clooney, was also in the house.
But the man who caught Morgan’s attention was Gunners boss Arteta.
Reliving the moment on talkSPORT, Morgan said: “All these big stars were there, and then suddenly, right into my eyeline came Mikel Arteta, who I’d never met.
“I went over and said, ‘Mikel, I don’t want to interrupt’, but he was very friendly.
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“He got up, we shook hands, we had a really nice chat and I said, ‘This is it, Mikel, we now have the team, we now have the squad’.
“I told him all of the new signings have been fantastic. All of them. From [Martin] Zubimendi to [Noni] Madueke, but the one I absolutely love is [Viktor] Gyokeres.
“I just think he’s that missing link. He’s a good old fashioned hard-working centre-forward.
“He makes great runs, pulls defenders away and allows people like [Bukayo] Saka and [Gabriel] Martinelli so much more space.
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“I’ve seen enough of his goal-scoring [to know] that when he gets a taste for goals he’ll never stop.”
Morgan publicly called for Arsenal to sack Arteta after a defeat to Newcastle in 2022.
But three years later, with the Gunners top of the pile, the tables have turned.
And Morgan shed more light on his meeting with the Spaniard on social media.
He wrote on Instagram: “I told him he makes me happier than any other human being at the moment. I may even have told Mikel that I love him on a personal level too.
“Despite my fan-girling, he couldn’t have been nicer or more friendly.
“Arsenal are very lucky to have such a classy guy at the helm, and I really do believe, as I told him, that this is the year the pain and torment ends.”
