KIERAN TIERNEY has opened up on the "toughest year of his life" after netting his first goal for Arsenal yesterday.
The former Celtic defender suffered injury after injury for the Gunners following his switch from Parkhead last summer.
But despite a series of knockbacks, the Scotland international has enjoyed a stunning end to the Premier League season where he has become a mainstay in Mikel Arteta's side.
Speaking after Arsenal's 3-2 victory over Watford on the final day of the season, Tierney said: “It’s been the toughest year of my life. I’ve had the injury and a lot of new challenges but you need challenges, you need to be uncomfortable.
“You need to challenge yourself to improve. I worked hard every day and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy coming to this massive club full of great players. I knew it was going to be tough coming in and trying to get my place in the team.
“I’m just grateful for every opportunity I get to go on the pitch and give my all. I try to repay the manager’s faith by working hard and trying to put in good performances. It’s all about the hard work."
On scoring his first goal in the famous red and white jersey, he added: “I didn’t know what to do [to celebrate the goal] so I just turned around. I think it was shock! I’ll take it. It was a good ball from Auba as well so it was a good day for me personally.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here