Mikel Arteta says he’s “positive” Arsenal can close the “big” gap between themselves and English football’s top sides in the coming years, and that he is looking forward to the “beautiful challenge ahead”.

A 1-0 defeat away at Aston Villa on Tuesday ensured that Arsenal will miss out on a place in the Premier League’s top six for the first time since 1995.

The result left the Gunners languishing way down in 10th in the standings after 37 fixtures, with little left to play for in their final day clash against Watford on Sunday.

Arteta has, however, overseen significant improvement at Emirates Stadium since being appointed Unai Emery’s permanent successor in December.

Clear signs of progress were evident during a 2-1 win over 2019-20 champions Liverpool last week, and Arsenal followed up that performance by knocking Manchester City out of the FA Cup at the semi-final stage.

The Gunners can still gain re-entry to the Europa League if they beat Chelsea in the showpiece event on August 1, but Arteta acknowledges the fact that his long-term project at the Emirates is still very much in its infancy.

The Spanish head coach told his press conference ahead of this weekend’s meeting with Watford: “I don’t think the league table lies at the end of 10 months with 38 games. Hopefully next season it will be very different.

“We have a beautiful challenge, a very demanding challenge but a beautiful challenge ahead of us. We have to get this right and bring this club back to where it belongs which is with the top teams in the country and in Europe. In order to do that we have to make a lot of good decisions.

“We haven’t been consistent. We obviously had a lot of issues as well in the background, a lot of things that had happened, but at the end of the day we weren’t good enough to be with the top teams.

“That’s not a lie and it shows the big room for improvement and the gap that is still there and has to be minimised really, really quickly in order to be in a good position to challenge those teams.”

Arteta added on Arsenal’s failures in the second half of the season and the “direction” he is trying like to take the club in: “It hurts so much. When I said it’s a beautiful challenge, and as well from my side, it’s to bring the club into those positions again.

“I know how difficult it’s going to be because you can see the other teams, what they’re doing, what they’ve been doing the last few seasons.

“The road and the direction we have to take in order to be quick in that transition. I’m very positive that we’re going to be able to do it.”