Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta refused to soften his assessment after Saturday\u2019s 2-1 defeat at the hands of Bournemouth, calling the display unacceptable and insisting responsibility lies with his players. A slow Arsenal start allowed Eli Junior Kroupi to open the scoring, and although Viktor Gy\u00f6keres levelled from the penalty spot, the hosts never recovered their control. With 15 minutes remaining Alex Scott struck the winner, a neatly worked finish that left Arsenal chasing the game.<\/p>\n
The result was a significant blow to Arsenal\u2019s rhythm. \u201cWell, extremely disappointing,\u201d Arteta told the assembled media after Saturday\u2019s setback. \u201cIt\u2019s a big punch on the face. That\u2019s what I said to the boys. And now it\u2019s about how we react to that. Because game on, you\u2019re going to require now a big speed, a lot of fight and very clear. How are we going to approach that?\u201d<\/p>\n
Arteta highlighted the wider context: Arsenal have now lost three of their previous four games in all competitions and have struggled to match the standards they set in the first half of the season throughout 2026. Once there were ambitious dreams of a quadruple chase; the run of recent results has left supporters anxious about the club\u2019s trajectory.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s no grey areas. We are in, we are out. And we need to be very, very, very strong and determined to approach it in a different way than we\u2019ve done today, especially when the game wasn\u2019t going our way,” he added.<\/p>\n
The manager apologised to those who attended and singled out the lack of precision in key moments. The Arsenal boss, who asked plenty of supporters ahead of the game, apologised to those in attendance and lamented the sloppiness of his side\u2019s showing . \u201cWe were very far from the level that I was shown. That\u2019s for certain, especially in certain areas that are critical,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Arteta also offered a clear rallying call ahead of the week: \u201cThere are no excuses. There is no this or that or the things that are here. It\u2019s about how we’re going to stand up, first of all, individually. And then as a team to change that immediately on Wednesday.\u201d The defeat also hands momentum to City, who will close the gap to six points with a win at Stamford Bridge and head into next week\u2019s Etihad showdown with added impetus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta: ‘There are no excuses.’ Arsenal’s 2-1 defeat to Bournemouth leaves serious questions. Read on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11559,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,739],"tags":[1505,1162,1304],"class_list":["post-11560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-bournemouth","tag-accountability","tag-analytics","tag-benching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}