Mikel Arteta admitted Arsenal’s 2-1 defeat by Bournemouth was “a big punch in the face” and said his players must show more character if they are going to end their 22-year wait to be crowned Premier League champions.
Alex Scott struck the winning goal 16 minutes from time after Viktor Gyökeres had equalised from the spot for a nervy Arsenal after Eli Junior Kroupi’s opener. It means Manchester City now have a chance to cut Arsenal’s lead at the top of the table to six points with a game still in hand when they face Chelsea on Sunday, with Arsenal travelling to the Etihad Stadium next Sunday.
The Arsenal manager could not hide his disappointment and apologised to the club’s supporters for a substandard performance. “It’s a big punch in the face, that’s what I said to the boys, and now it’s about how we react to that,” said Arteta.
“There’s no grey areas. We need to be very, very, very strong and determined to approach it in a different way than we’ve done today, especially when the game wasn’t going our way. There’s a lot, a lot, a lot on our plate to look at ourselves.”
Arsenal have finished as runners-up for the past three seasons and have led the Premier League table since the start of October. Arteta acknowledged the pressure of not having been champions for so long was contributing to the anxiety of supporters. “We know what is at stake,” he said. “The fact that as a club we haven’t done it for so long is a reason for that. We talked about the difficulty.”
“But I just want to focus on the things we can control, dominate. And we have done it. It’s not that we have to do a lot of new things that we haven’t done. Almost all the things we’ve done for nine months, because that’s what has taken us all the way there.
“On Wednesday [actually Tuesday, in the Champions League against Sporting] I saw a lot of them. And today, yes, we’ve gone back. So we need to learn. We need to be very critical of ourselves and then pick ourselves up.”
The Bournemouth manager, Andoni Iraola, was delighted as his side ended a run of five draws with a statement victory. “We showed great personality to play in a big game and a big stadium,” he said. “We had very good spells on the ball. We were finding good gaps in the middle.”