Arsenal star Gabriel Martinelli has fired a warning shot to Newcastle ahead of their Carabao Cup clash on Wednesday night.

The Gunners, fuelled by an emphatic five-goal rout of Manchester City on Sunday, are set to march into St James' Park-a ground that has been far from favourable to them in recent visits-with renewed hope as they look to reverse their two-goal semi-final leg deficit.

Basking in the afterglow of demolishing City in what turned out to be a feisty affair, Arsenal now have the smell of Wembley within reach. Martinelli, who was one of the main tormentors with his penetrating runs and indefatigable energy against City, is eager for the opportunity to settle the score against the Magpies, stating: "We're going there to win the game and score three, four, five."

Last season's contentious winning goal by Anthony Gordon at St James' Park still leaves a bitter taste in Arsenal's mouth-a crucial blow to their title challenge-and the frustration was compounded with another 1-0 defeat just three months back.

Moreover, a disheartening 2-0 loss at St James' in May 2022, which thwarted Arsenal's top-four ambitions, led to a heated dressing-room outburst by manager Mikel Arteta, famously captured in the Amazon Prime documentary 'All Or Nothing: Arsenal'.

In the midst of his outburst, Arteta vented: "It is f***ing embarrassing to come here the way we have done it," before adding: "Don't worry, I will face the people. Today it is hard to defend you guys. I will take all the s*** again."

Arsenal now head into this cup clash in different circumstances. casting aside the previous comments from Arteta regarding the Carabao Cup ball - "It's tricky, it flies differently" - which he had mentioned post-defeat at the hands of Eddie Howe's team.

Now, buoyed by confidence, Martinelli said: "We know our qualities. It is not because we lost 2-0 here in the last game, we are going to go there to win the game and to score three, four, five. Let's see - the game is going to be really hard, for sure. It is going to be another battle. We know how difficult it is to play there.

"But we have an amazing team and we trust ourselves. It is hard to play there and they are a really good side, but we have full confidence in our squad and we trust ourselves."

Arsenal's recent demolition of City, pushing their unbeaten Premier League streak to an impressive 14 games and closing on Liverpool's lead by six points, has sparked talks of a title race reinvigoration. Martinelli added: "It was a great game for us. We are really happy with the performance but we still have a long journey to go, many games to go, so we are going to try to do our best to win the league.

"We are really happy (with the unbeaten run). We know our qualities, the team that we have. Even though we have some players injured, we know the quality we have in the team."

All the talk after the final whistle on Sunday centred around young guns Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri, whose strikes added a shine to what many considered Pep Guardiola's greatest setback at the helm of City.

Lewis-Skelly took a cheeky swipe at City's star man Erling Haaland by mirroring the striker's yoga goal celebration - a move seen by many as a retort to Haaland's abrasive comments "Who the f*** are you?" that he threw at the Arsenal youngster during their previous heated 2-2 clash.

Martinelli weighed in on the celebration: "I don't know [if it was planned], you'll have to ask him. But for sure, he respects Erling a lot. We are really happy with him, he scored an amazing goal today. He has been brilliant recently and we are happy for him.

"It was two teams that want to win the championship, so that's a fight. We have to win duels to win these games and that's why the game becomes hard work. We are really happy with the result. We did brilliant."

This article originally appeared on The Mirror.