Mikel Arteta, the manager of Arsenal, has expressed regret for his team’s poor performance in the second half of Sunday’s match against Brighton, which resulted in a 3-0 loss at Arsenal’s home stadium. This result allowed Manchester City to move closer to winning the Premier League title.
The Gunners had spent a significant portion of the season at the top of the standings as they attempted to break a drought of 19 years without winning the championship.
However, in recent months, the wheels have gone off for Arsenal as a result of the constant pressure applied by City, who have won 11 straight games in the league.
The guys coached by Arteta have only won two of their past seven games combined.
Arteta said in an interview with Sky Sports that the team “needs to apologize because the performance we had in the second half is not acceptable.”
“Mathematically (winning the league) it’s still possible, and this is football; however, it is impossible to be thinking about it at this point in time.” First, we need to take some time to process the outcome and the performance that we turned in during the second half. Once we do that, we can better understand why it happened and prepare for the next game.
If Arsenal suffer a defeat at the hands of Nottingham Forest on Saturday, City will clinch the title for the fifth time in the past six years and for the third year in a row.
Even if Arteta’s team manages to pull off a victory against Forest, the championship will still go to City if they are victorious against Chelsea at home on May 21 or if they pick up three points in each of their next two matches on the road at Brighton and Brentford.
Just by being in the hunt for the championship, Arsenal has already exceeded everyone’s expectations, and now they have guaranteed themselves a spot in the Champions League for the first time in seven years.
But Arteta believes that his team’s inability to rebound after going behind due to a header scored by Julio Enciso early in the second half is a warning sign in front of the upcoming season.
In the dying phases of the match, Deniz Undav and Pervis Estupinan scored goals that were like rubbing salt in the wounds of Arsenal, and as a result, Brighton made a significant advance toward European qualifying for the first time in the club’s history.
Arteta continued by saying, “We gave up a goal, and from that point on, the team did not react.”
If the team is capable of doing that, there is something that needs to be addressed on our end. “When you give away the silly goal we gave away, the second one, the team collapsed and had no answers.”
Martin Odegaard, the captain of Arsenal, acknowledged that the race for the title is essentially finished. The Norwegian responded with, “Yeah, it seems to be that way.” “We have to admit that this is going to be a very challenging time for us. It is difficult to swallow.
“I do not have a positive impression of the situation right now. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what went wrong given the way that we performed, particularly in the second half. It seems as though there is no longer any chance.”
Odegaard argued that his younger teammates were psychologically tough enough to handle the burden of the title battle, despite the fact that they collapsed late in the game.
“We wanted to come here and continue like we have in the last two games, get a good result, and keep pushing,” they said. “We wanted to come here and continue like we have in the last two games.” He described it as a significant setback in his opinion.
We did a lot of nice things and had opportunities to generate big chances in the first half, but in the second half we gave them more and more momentum. “In the first half, we gave them a lot of momentum.
“I don’t believe that one’s mental state was a problem. We were in terrific shape heading into the game, but the game itself was a whole different story, and we have to come to terms with that difference and learn from it.