Mikel Arteta offered a short, dry response when faced with Fabian H\u00fcrzeler\u2019s post-match criticism. Asked about the Brighton manager\u2019s accusation of Arsenal\u2019s so-called dark arts, Arteta smiled and said: “What a surprise.”<\/p>\n
The exchange followed a 1\u20130 game decided by a scratchy Bukayo Saka finish and dominated at times by lengthy stoppages. At the final whistle H\u00fcrzeler remained openly frustrated. “Only one team who tried to play football,” Brighton\u2019s beleaguered boss fumed.<\/p>\n
Opta highlighted the extent of the delays, noting Arsenal required a combined 30 minutes and 51 seconds to restart play across the contest, which saw 13 minutes added on. H\u00fcrzeler widened his critique in a longer interview: “I ask you one question,” he posed to assembled media. “Did you see in a Premier League game a goalkeeper going down three times? You can\u2019t control these kind of things … therefore the Premier League has to find a rule.<\/p>\n
“I made my point before the game and I stick to it. In the end I think [against] these kind of opponents, you can only punish [them] by winning so today I have no arguments on my side. If I would have a 2\u20131 win, a deserved 2\u20131 win, I could speak differently.”<\/p>\n
Arteta had warned before Wednesday\u2019s fixture that David Raya was suffering from “some niggles”, yet the matchroom interpretation of each stoppage remained a source of debate. The sport\u2019s authorities are reported to be considering measures to curb excessive delays, including forcing players to remain off the pitch for one minute after treatment, though there are not thought to be any specific punishments for goalkeepers who require medical attention.<\/p>\n
Arteta was unconcerned by H\u00fcrzeler\u2019s protest. “You just go back to the previous games [between Brighton and Arsenal] and you\u2019ll find a lot of comments like this always,” he shrugged. That earlier context included a different tone from H\u00fcrzeler, who in October praised Arsenal\u2019s set pieces: “You can\u2019t defend them one-against-one, that\u2019s the first thing,” he explained. “The second thing, I think it\u2019s not only Gabriel [who provides a threat], it\u2019s the movement they do together. I think they block very well for each other.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta’s three-word reply followed Fabian Hurzeler’s complaint after a stoppage-heavy 1-0 Saka goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,773,172],"tags":[1162,826],"class_list":["post-7572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-brighton-hove-albion","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-bukayo-saka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7572","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=7572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}