Mikel Arteta stated Arsenal should not use fatigue as an excuse following their defeat in opposition to Bournemouth as he challenged his gamers to rediscover their “enjoyment” of the sport.
Arsenal missed a golden alternative to maneuver 12 factors away from Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City after they produced a dismal show in a 2-1 loss to the Cherries on the Emirates.
The defeat marked Arsenal’s third-in-a-row on the home stage after their Carabao Cup last loss to City and shock FA Cup exit at Championship facet Southampton.
Arsenal will look to bounce again instantly within the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final in opposition to Sporting Lisbon in London on Wednesday.
The fixture — with Arsenal holding a slender 1-0 benefit from the opening match — would be the north London membership’s 54th of the season thus far, simply three greater than City could have performed.
Quite a lot of Arteta’s gamers seemed to be off the tempo of their defeat in opposition to Bournemouth with captain Martin Ødegaard, star winger Bukayo Saka and full-back Jurriën Timber all absent by damage.
– Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta: Bournemouth defeat a ‘big punch in the face’
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But when requested if he sensed tiredness amongst his crew, Arteta stated:
“I don’t want to pull on those excuses because we’ve been playing so many games, every three days, and we’re going to have to continue to do that.
“That’s the context and that is the state of affairs, and we’ve to embrace it and particularly benefit from the alternative.
“That’s one of the things that I didn’t see from the team, that level of enjoyment in certain moments and the fight that we have to have to really change the course of the game when it gets difficult.
“We’re going to have totally different contexts from right here to June, and we’d like to have the ability to adapt and resolve all of them, if we need to obtain what we need to obtain.”
Viktor Gyökeres was one of only a handful of Arsenal players to leave Saturday’s defeat with any credit.
He scored a first-half penalty to take his tally to the season to 18.
Looking ahead to Arsenal’s second leg against his old side Sporting at the Emirates – with a possible semi-final against Paris Saint-Germain or Liverpool to come back – Viktor Gyökeres stated:
“We have lots of necessary video games forward, and we have to embrace it and to take pleasure in taking part in these video games.
“It’s a great game to have in a few days, so we just need to recover now, leave this behind and make a very good performance on Wednesday.”
