Mikel Arteta has shared the message that he gave to his Arsenal players in the dressing room after they were beaten 1-0 away to Aston Villa. The Gunners boss was banned from the touchline on Saturday evening due to an accumulation of yellow cards.
It meant he had to watch his side fall to their second league defeat of the season from the director’s box. But he was able to spend some time with his players after the match and he attempted to keep their spirits high.
“I just told them ‘pull your head up because the way you played’ I see many, many teams come here and I haven’t seen many do what we have done to them today but the result is not there but certainly the way we played it was there,” Arteta said.
John McGinn scored the only goal of the match in the seventh minute but Arsenal had their chances to equalise. Martin Odegaard wasted the pick of them when he shot wide when picked out by Kai Havertz unmarked in the box.
Arteta added: “The result. I’m really proud of the way the team played in this stadium against this team. We deserved to win the game but you have to be better in the boxes and things have to go your way as well.
“That was one of the things [failure to put the ball in the net]. Especially in the second half we lost a bit of control, we gave the ball away, we went in to attack the ball too fast because you are tempted to put the ball in behind with the way they defend with the line but we could have done a bit better.”
Havertz had a 90th-minute equaliser ruled out for handball. The north Londoners were also denied a penalty earlier in the game when Gabriel Jesus went down in the box following contact with Ezri Konsa.
Arteta said it was “It’s clear and obvious for me” and added: “I thought it was a goal but I haven’t seen it so don’t want to say too much.” He refused to expand further for fear of being penalised for criticising the officials.
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