>
Mikel Arteta admits his team played into Everton’s hands following their 1-0 loss to the Toffees… with Oleksandr Zinchenko’s struggle with Neal Maupay showing signs of shorting Arsenal
Mikel Arteta will never use 100 words if one sentence is enough, nor will he give you an in-depth analysis if he can say something neutral.
So it was one of those moments, an hour after Arsenal suffered a rare league defeat, that his ears perked up as he recognized an injury time incident.
Oleksandr Zinchenko had been involved in a scuffle on the ground with Everton’s irritating Neal Maupay.
Zinchenko allowed his emotions to run wild, wasting valuable time and giving Everton a chance to break the game.
That spoke to where we are in the season. Arsenal, the league leaders, are going to be a scalp in every game. They play Brentford, Manchester City, Aston Villa and Leicester this month and the intensity in each will be comparable to the Goodison furnace.
Mikel Arteta said his team played into Everton’s hands after their 1-0 loss to the Toffees.
Oleksandr Zinchenko’s fight with Neal Maupay showed his frustrations and wasted time
Do Arsenal have the emotional capacity to deal with their first genuine title quest since 2004? Or did Zinchenko, a four-time league champion with City, short-circuit as a bad sign? “In the last 15 minutes, particularly after we made changes, we gave away a lot of free kicks and made hasty decisions, which is exactly what Everton wanted,” Arteta said.
‘They wanted to slow down the game, play a lot on our line and not play a lot. We haven’t handled it well enough. He was sure that it was going to be exactly as it was.
“The other thing is what we can do in the game and try to calm them down and cause them frustration.”
There was a good line from Arteta: ‘I love my players more than before’, but what he will want now is composure.
As soon as Everton earned their first corner and the crowd began to roar, Arsenal seemed to shake and no visiting player won their personal battle.
It’s the first time this has happened in months, so criticism should be tempered. Still, this is the point in the season where everything matters and it would be foolish to ignore how Arsenal fell apart, unable to test Jordan Pickford.
With Arsenal in clear sight of goal in the first period, Eddie Nketiah fired so high into the Gwladys Street stand that he nearly ended up in line for halftime cakes and Bovril.
“We weren’t at the level we needed to be,” Nketiah said. ‘We have to improve and recover in our next match. Thanks to Everton, they executed a good game plan.
‘I love my players more than before’: Mikel Arteta remained positive after 1-0 loss