Mikel Arteta hailed his “incredible” Arsenal medical team for getting Christos Tzolis ready to start against Liverpool.

The Gunners came away from Anfield with a 1-0 victory, the first time they have won at the ground in the Premier League since 2012.

Kai Havertz scored the only goal of the match early in the first half and that proved enough as Arsenal delivered another massive defensive effort.

Tzolis was a surprise inclusion in the starting lineup, having not played a minute since he suffered a hamstring injury while on international duty with Greece a month ago.

Eberechi Eze was only named on the bench, though Arteta revealed after the match that the Englishman had been dealing with an injury concern of his own.

He forced Alisson into a superb low save and almost created a second Arsenal goal with a lovely cross to the back post.

Asked what convinced him Tzolis was ready to start, Arteta replied: “It’s the energy that he had in training.

“When I asked him the question, how convinced he was. We had an issue with Ebs [Eze] as well, it was incredible that he was in the squad today.

“I want to give credit to all the medical and performance team. What they are doing with those boys is incredible. Every three days, to keep everybody at this level.

“These are the margins sometimes when you win a football match, whether you have somebody available or not. They deserve that credit.

“With Christos, incredible. He didn’t want to come off, he wanted to complete the game. We took some risks, but at a point we decided enough was enough.”

Arsenal’s win was all the more significant considering it came off the back of an embarrassing Carabao Cup exit to League Two side Fleetwood in midweek.

The Gunners were knocked out on penalties in that tie and were punished for an incredibly wasteful display, but Arteta was able to inspire his players to quickly put that behind them.

He said: “It was a feeling of ‘how the hell can that happen?’

“How you can go out of the cup when you shoot 27 times, we had the chances that we had against a team that put one shot on target. Then you look so silly.

“You have to go to Anfield and say, ‘how can I lift those players up?’ I had the feeling that now was the moment.

“We’re going to have to dig deep, have an element of luck at times, and for sure a lot of quality in key moments. We have done it.”