“Passive,” “horrible” and frankly “unacceptable” were some of the strong terms Mikel Arteta used to deride Arsenal’s performance against Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday night.
The Gunners emerged with a 2–1 victory to take them five points clear of Manchester City at the Premier League summit, yet had to rely upon two own goals to scrape past the worst team in the division in front of their own fans.
Arteta mainly took exception with his side’s approach to defending the closing stages of an ugly contest. Leading 1–0 thanks to a mightily fortuitous Sam Johnstone own goal, Arsenal huddled into a “passive” low block which afforded Mateus Mane the time and space to fizz a cross into the box which Tolu Arokodare guided past David Raya in the 90th minute.
“We had a period of two or three minutes in deep [block], totally passive with horrible defensive habits,” Arteta seethed. “That’s nowhere near the required level against a team that hasn’t had a single shot. The first time they had the opportunity to do it, they scored a goal.”
Contrary to Arteta’s recollection, Wolves had actually carved open the game’s clearest first-half chance, when Hwang Hee-chan led a one-man counterattack before forcing Raya into a testing save. Arsenal, by contrast, did not have a single shot on target in the opening 45 minutes of a Premier League game for the first time this season.
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“We’re relieved because we managed to score a goal at the end and go and win it but we need to improve in that sense [defensively], for sure,” Arteta moaned. “I don’t put it down to ‘yeah, the resilience [is good].’ We should have stopped the source before. That’s on us.”
Specifically, Arteta was disgusted with the lack of urgency shown by his players from this deep defensive setup rather than the actual act of dropping back towards their own goal. “We can defend deep because they commit a lot of players,” he explained. “There is the moment you cannot press them. That’s fine. But the level of activity in that block has to be very different to the one that we had.”
“You have to give credit to Wolves,” Arteta acknowledged. “I knew that wasn’t going to be an easy game but we made it even harder with the manner we conceded the goal. And that’s unacceptable.”
‘We Struggled’—Arteta Acknowledges Attacking Difficulties
Even when Wolves aren’t putting the ball in their own net, Rob Edwards’ rock-bottom outfit have hardly been parsimonious this season. Yet, Arsenal desperately struggled to create any clear openings throughout Saturday’s underwhelming affair.
“We had one big chance with [Gabriel] Martinelli two yards out, totally free, and didn’t score,” Arteta told TNT Sports postgame. “But we struggled once we arrived into the danger zones to pick out red shirts in the box. We had many situations like that. And then we didn’t generate many clear chances.”
Eberechi Eze was almost impressively anonymous throughout his 57 minutes on the pitch, failing to take or create a single shot while mustering just one fleeting touch inside Wolves’ box. Martin Ødegaard was brought on to replace the summer recruit and didn’t have a great deal more success.
Viktor Gyökeres battled with plenty of endeavour and no end product once more, forcing Arsenal to fall back upon their painfully familiar tactic of shovelling the ball wide to Bukayo Saka again and again and again. As Arteta outlined, even Saka couldn’t pick out a red shirt in the box. But fortunately for the Gunners, the ones in turquoise proved to be more adept at putting the ball in their own net.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Furious Mikel Arteta Tears Into Arsenal Players After Wolves Scare.