Arsenal skipper Arteta adapting to starting from bench

(Reuters) - A fit-again Arsenal captain Mikel Arteta says he is adapting to the "new situation" of starting matches from the bench after being a first team regular in his first three seasons with the Gunners. The midfielder missed six months of the last campaign with a niggling calf problem sustained last November. Arteta has recently returned to full fitness and made his first Premier League appearance of the season against Crystal Palace. "It's hard when you come (on) like this, when the team is hanging on to try to keep that result, but you need to get there with the highest intensity possible, start making an impact if possible, and it's a new situation for me," the 33-year-old told the club's website (www.arsenal.com). "I've never been like this before, a substitute. When you're sitting on the bench you just have to keep trying to see things happening." The Spaniard said adapting is not easy as the pace of the game is misleading when he watches it from the bench. "Going from the outside to the inside is very different. Outside, everything looks slower, and when you get in there it's 100mph so you really need to be ready," the former Everton captain said. "You have to warm up really well and when you get there you have to be ready to go straight away," he added. (Reporting by Shravanth Vijayakumar in Bengaluru; editing by Amlan Chakraborty)