Mikel Arteta did not hide his frustration after Arsenal were forced into a tense finish against Wolverhampton Wanderers, conceding a 90th-minute goal after leading thanks to a Sam Johnstone own goal. The manager singled out the team\u2019s temperament and organisation in the closing stages.<\/p>\n
\u201cPassive,\u201d \u201chorrible\u201d and frankly \u201cunacceptable\u201d were some of the strong terms Mikel Arteta used to deride Arsenal\u2019s performance against Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday night. Arteta took particular issue with the way his side retreated into a low block, allowing Wolves time to deliver the cross that led to the late equaliser \u2014 Mateus Mane\u2019s cross found Tolu Arokodare, who guided the ball past David Raya in the 90th minute.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a period of two or three minutes in deep [block], totally passive with horrible defensive habits,\u201d Arteta seethed. \u201cThat\u2019s nowhere near the required level against a team that hasn\u2019t had a single shot. The first time they had the opportunity to do it, they scored a goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wolves had earlier produced the game\u2019s clearest first-half chance when Hwang Hee-chan led a one-man counterattack and forced 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re 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,\u201d Arteta moaned. \u201cI don\u2019t put it down to \u2018yeah, the resilience [is good].\u2019 We should have stopped the source before. That\u2019s on us.\u201d<\/p>\n
He defended the principle of defending deep when opponents commit numbers forward but criticised the team\u2019s work rate: \u201cWe can defend deep because they commit a lot of players,\u201d he explained. \u201cThere is the moment you cannot press them. That\u2019s fine. But the level of activity in that block has to be very different to the one that we had.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to give credit to Wolves,\u201d Arteta acknowledged. \u201cI knew that wasn\u2019t going to be an easy game but we made it even harder with the manner we conceded the goal. And that\u2019s unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also highlighted offensive shortcomings: \u201cWe had one big chance with [Gabriel] Martinelli two yards out, totally free, and didn\u2019t score,\u201d Arteta told TNT Sports postgame. \u201cBut 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\u2019t generate many clear chances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eberechi Eze lasted 57 minutes without a shot or a created attempt and registered only one touch inside Wolves\u2019 box. Martin \u00d8degaard was brought on to replace the summer recruit and didn\u2019t have a great deal more success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta condemned Arsenal’s late defensive lapse versus Wolves, calling the showing ‘unacceptable’…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5072,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,969,783],"tags":[1162,1307,1215],"class_list":["post-5073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-premier-league","category-wolverhampton-wanderers","tag-analytics","tag-collapse","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5073","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=5073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}