Mikel Arteta spoke to Sky Sports after Arsenal’s 2-0 defeat to Aston Villa this evening. Here’s what he had to say.
What did you make of the performance?
Well, two very different ones. The first half was superb, one of the best halves that we have played against a top team. It should have been three or four or more, I don’t know. You don’t put that scoreline and you don’t reflect on that in the second half. We lacked momentum. It didn’t happen a lot of things, but we didn’t have the flow that we had in the first half. And yeah, we conceded two very, very poor goals.
How did Villa take that momentum away from you?
Well, credit to them, because in the first half we had a lot but we were a bit imprecise with the ball. We didn’t have enough sequences in the right areas to do what we did in the first half. We were struggling to regain the ball as well as we did in the first half. And that’s it. In the end we lost it and we have to congratulate the opponent.
Is it about not being clinical?
For sure. When you are at this level you have to punish them. It’s not like you’re going to do that for 90-95 minutes against a top opponent and we haven’t done that. At least don’t concede the goals that we have.
Did not scoring play on their minds?
Well, I don’t know. That’s more a question for the players that are out there, but that’s always in football the case, you know. And then you have to be, sometimes, a bit more patient than we were in the second half to find our moments and we’re trying to, as well with the changes, that’s when we conceded the goal.
Why did you take off Odegaard?
Yeah, because he had a injury. That’s why.
How important now is emotional stability? There’s going to be a lot of noise, City at the top now. How do you cut through that?
We cannot control that. The way we can control is when you have the run that we had and you win and you win and you win and you win and you win, and you draw and you win win win win win, it’s easy to be a leader, easy to stand up, easy to stand here, easy to be around with the flow. Now, the moment is now. After this blow, how we react, we have the best opportunity to react on Wednesday night against Bayern Munich and now the team has to show it and we have to make sure that we react in a way that if you want to win, you have to respect all the situations.
It was going to happen [a blip], with the games that we had it was going to happen. Now how we react to that, that’s going to be the key.
Will players think of last season?
What you can control is how you’re going to feel now, the way you talk now, the way you react and the way you look ahead of what is happening on Wednesday. And this is in our control.
On being behind Man City now …
Yeah, but we cannot control that. With the amount of games that you have won in a row in any other league in the world, you are six or eight points clear. It’s not the case now, and this is the challenge.
I cannot figure out how we didn’t adapt to their playing the ball out. Take the fecking risk and push up. They just played out time and time again. We had one player pressing and the others half hearted. Arteta got schooled in the second half by dick Emery. Very poor.
Because once again we haven’t rotated all season so once again our players are either completely fatigued (Saka, Rice, Ben White) or have no match sharpness (Smith Rowe and the rest of the bench) at the business end of the season.
As simple as, we should have been fresher, but they ran around us. Our press was ineffective, be didn’t win second balls. Saliba and Gabriel can’t pass forward to save their lives,
We don’t know the basic on how to beat a high line. We are not cynical in front of goal; nor in committing fouls to stop a counter attack
Gabriel and ,particularly, Saliba are effective at passing forwards when they have options but Porto gave every team in Europe the blueprint on how to stop them: let the CBs the ball, block the passing lane to Odegaard and sit deep to not leave space for a ball over the defence.
18 months ago Partey was the best player in the world at solving that problem. I hope he can give us one final purple patch until the end of the season.
Completely agree
It’s hard to find the balance between needing to win all the games as we know is required to beat City and rotating in the squad players who you don’t believe will put you in the best position to win the game. He would be taking bricks if we were losing games with squad players getting minutes in those games earlier in the season. Your fundamental point is correct, the players as currently rotated are knackered from over playing. I’m not convinced playing the squad more minutes wins us all of the games in the winning streak, so essentially we… Read more »
A good ebening to you gentle people.
Fuck off Emery bot.
Lack of rotation.
Tired first 13/14 outfield players.
Worse, the same players won’t be rejuvenated by Wednesday
Yup. Rice looked exhausted on Tuesday and was caught ball watching and flat footed in the 82nd minute for Bailey’s goal – it’s not a coincidence
Some breathtakingly incisive questions there by our tactically astute football journalists.
One of the most poisonous things about the era of financial doping is its effect on the reactions of supporters of contending teams when their team doesn’t win. Setbacks used to be a normal part of every campaign; no one was happy about them, but they weren’t the end of the world, and they didn’t unleash this extraordinary venom we see today. Imagine if all 12 draws of the Invincibles had resulted in furious denunciations of Henry for missing a chance (because even Henry did not finish all his chances) of Bergkamp for misplaying a pass (because even Bergkamp misplayed… Read more »
Well said. We’re up against 115. Consider where we’ve come from. We’re doing fantastically. Unfortunately, the team looks tired because our squad doesn’t have the depth of 115. That’s it. Take a day off, let’s go again
This is the comment everyone needs to read today.
We need a goal machine up front!!! The guy that played for Coventry last season looks like he knows where the net is, unfortunately jesus isn’t clinical enough – the rest of his game wow amazing