Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has given reasons for his side’s defeat to Manchester United at Old Trafford yesterday.
The Gunners fell 3-1 to the Red Devils as Arteta’s side lost their 100 percent start to the season with their first defeat in six Premier League games.
Antony scored on his Manchester United debut and Marcus Rashford added a brace while Bukayo Saka netted for Arsenal as the hosts secured their fourth straight Premier League win.
Arteta felt that on another day, the Premier League leaders could have continued their winning start to the campaign.
“Well, I’m very disappointed that we haven’t won the game because the game was there for the taking,” the Spaniard said during his post-match press conference.
“We haven’t won it because we lacked some discipline in certain moments to defend certain actions, and then we were involved in something in front of the opponent’s goal.”
Arsenal had a goal by Gabriel Martinelli disallowed for a foul in the build-up following a VAR review.
It was before Antony’s opener and Arteta felt it was a generous decision by referee Paul Tierney.
“I haven’t seen the action, but what I said is that it was a soft foul, so it’s just the consistency of the soft foul on Bukayo Saka from [Tyrone] Mings on the penalty last week, but it’s not a penalty,” he noted.
“The soft foul on Aaron Ramsdale when we conceded against Villa is a goal, so it’s just consistency and there’s nothing we can do now because it’s too late just to be consistent.”
Although Arteta believed his team played well in patches, he stressed the need for them to play with more composure and discipline.
He said: “We lacked discipline and we conceded the first goal when it was an action with Bruno and three vs three in the backline and we don’t follow our principles and we concede the goal, which was two against one.
“After that it was all us, chance after chance, dominating the game and imposing ourselves in the way that we want to play. I said at half-time to the boys: ‘the game is there for the taking’.
“We play with even more courage and we’re going to win the game. We went to 1-1 and we should have been 2-1 or 3-1, and in the best moment again we gave them all away in a dangerous area and on top of that we stepped in when we can never do that again.
“We suffered the goal and it’s a big lesson. If you want to win here you have to do everything so right and especially if you don’t do it there, then in the opponent’s goal with the amount of chances that we created we needed to score more goals.”
Arteta admitted that his team would learn their lessons from the defeat as they go into the rest of the long season.
He added: “We need to be consistent with the top teams and to challenge at the top of this league, really you have to come here and play the way that you play, but also win and that’s a very different story.
“But to play the way that we did here today I want to see how many teams will do it this season.”
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