In the match against West Ham United, Arsenal were able to lead 2-0 first when the game had only been running for 10 minutes through goals scored by Gabriel Jesus and Martin Odegaard.
However, Arsenal failed to hold on to their 2-0 lead with West Ham winger Said Benrahma scoring a penalty in the 33rd minute to make it 2-1.
West Ham United were able to equalize when Jarrod Bowen directed a volley at the Arsenal goal guarded by Aaron Ramsdale.
“I would say yes if I saw the team from the start play [makes a choking sound]; when I see the team play with that flow, NO,” Arteta said at his post-match press conference, when asked if the run-in pressure was affecting his players, such as quoted by ESPN.
“And when it was 2-0 it wasn’t pressure. We completely misunderstood what the game required in that moment. We started very well again, dominated the game, dominated the pitch and scored two beautiful goals.”
“After that we made a big mistake: stopped playing with the same objective to score the third and fourth goals and just thought that we could play around them and keep the result. It looked too easy and in that moment we gave them hope, and credit for West Ham, they took it. They went very direct — from a long throw to the corner — and we really struggled to get out of that game.”
“If you don’t defend your box like you should then you have to do things better for a longer time. Then there are moments when you can go 3-1 up and maybe it’s game over. But this is part of my concern is after 2 -0 we made a big mistake and didn’t understand what the game required at the time.”
“We needed a ruthless mindset to go in the moment and kill the team – when teams are there for the taking you have to kill them. Today we haven’t done that and when you don’t do that in the Premier League, at some stage, it will turn around, they will If you have momentum, then you have to defend, for example, the second goal was better than we did otherwise you won’t win the game.”
“The last thing we want in our brains is not to have faith that after having the possibility to kill the game we didn’t. That’s the next stage. When you’re there, you have to do it. You have to play with the same objective or more and give them nothing.”
Martin Odegaard says it was Arsenal’s mistake in letting West Ham return to playing with their quality.
Asked by Sky Sports how they lost their lead, the Arsenal captain said: “A lot of the same as last week, started well but then we stopped, let them play with their quality. We gave them the games they wanted, we gave them hope, and it’s upon us. We have to look ahead now.”
“We started doing a lot of stupid things with the ball, we let them play long balls,” said Odegaard.
