Mikel Arteta admits his side played into Everton’s hands following their 1-0 loss to the Toffees… with Oleksandr Zinchenko’s grapple with Neal Maupay showing signs of Arsenal short-circuiting
Mikel Arteta will never use 100 words if one sentence will do, nor will he give you deep analysis if he can say something neutral.
So it was one of those moments, an hour after Arsenal had suffered a rare league defeat, when the ears pricked up as he acknowledged an incident in stoppage time.
Oleksandr Zinchenko had been drawn into a grapple on the floor with Everton irritant Neal Maupay.
Zinchenko allowed his emotions to boil over, wasting valuable time and giving Everton a chance to break up the game.
That spoke of where we are in the season. Arsenal, the league leaders, are going to be a scalp in every fixture. They play Brentford, Manchester City, Aston Villa and Leicester this month and the intensity in each will be comparable with the Goodison furnace.
Mikel Arteta said his side played into Everton’s hands following their 1-0 loss to the Toffees
Oleksandr Zinchenko’s grapple with Neal Maupay exhibited their frustrations and wasted time
Do Arsenal have the emotional capacity to deal with their first genuine title pursuit since 2004? Or was Zinchenko — four times a league champion with City — short-circuiting a bad sign? ‘In the last 15 minutes, particularly after we made changes, we gave away lots of free-kicks and made rash decisions, which is exactly what Everton wanted,’ said Arteta.
‘They wanted to slow the game down, play long into our line and not play a lot. We haven’t managed that well enough. I was certain it was going to be exactly how it was.
‘The other thing is what we can do in the game and try to quieten them and cause frustration.’
There was a nice line from Arteta — ‘I love my players more than I did before’ — but what he will want now is composure.
As soon as Everton won their first corner and the crowd started roaring, Arsenal seemed rattled and no visiting player won their personal battle.
It is the first time this has happened for months, so criticism must be tempered. Still, this is the point in the season when everything matters and it would be folly to ignore how Arsenal folded, unable to test Jordan Pickford.
When Arsenal did have a clear sight of goal in the first period, Eddie Nketiah put his shot so far up the Gwladys Street stand that it nearly ended up in the queue for the half-time pies and Bovril.
‘We weren’t at the standard we needed to be,’ said Nketiah. ‘We’ve got to improve and bounce back in our next game. Credit to Everton, they executed a good game plan.’
‘I love my players more than I did before’: Mikel Arteta remained positive after the 1-0 loss
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