Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Mikel Arteta believes it is time to love and appreciate Arsenal players for what they have done during the course of the season, following the shock defeat at Everton.
THE LOWDOWN: POOR ARSENAL
Arsenal were not at their best on Saturday when they travelled to Everton for the weekend’s early kick-off match.
The Gunners barely left gear one and they struggled to impose themselves on the game as they customarily do.
Everton, playing under new manager Sean Dyche, took full advantage and inflicted the first loss of the year on the Premier League leaders.
A James Tarkowski header at the hour-mark settled the contest at Goodison Park, leaving Arsenal without a win in their past two games in all competitions.
THE LATEST: MORE SUPPORT
Reflecting on the game, Arteta said: “We need to digest this one because it is important to digest, look in the mirror and on Monday come to the training ground ready for a fight because Brentford will be tough.
“Now is a time to love the players more than the day before and the month before, because they fully deserve it. We will be next to them and prepare for Saturday.”
“The reality is that we should have done more to win the game,” he said.
“We put ourselves in many situations and we had to defend so many set pieces, and against this team, it is a very difficult thing to do.
“Then in terms of our possession, we opened them up in many, many situations and we got into the final third in great positions and we didn’t finish well enough.
“They work on [set pieces] every single day and are really good at it. We have experience with Burnley in that type of situation and we have to prevent that happening, and we have to do the basics in defending really well against this team and we came up short in that.
“We still had a lot of time to react to that and we generated some situations but especially in the last 15 minutes, emotionally we didn’t manage the game well enough. We conceded too many free-kicks that stopped the game every 30-40 seconds and we couldn’t get back into the game.
“In the end, it is about the last 20 minutes and what do you do? There I think we lacked something to win like we won a lot of games this season, but we’ll work on that.”
THE VERDICT: REACTION NEEDED
It was an usual afternoon at Everton on Saturday, but luckily for the Gunners City also lost to Tottenham, preserving the five-point gap at the top.
Arteta and his boys will need to give a strong reaction in the next games in order to get back on track.
