Arsenal confidence ‘smashed to pieces’ in hammer blow as Arteta admits they were ‘extremely bad’ | OneFootball

Arsenal’s Premier League title aspirations have taken an almighty hit after they were defeated 2-1 by Bournemouth at the Emirates, and Paul Merson has blasted their ‘sloppy’ performance, while Mikel Arteta admitted his team were ‘extremely bad’ at times.

Manchester City are nine points behind but have two games in hand on Arsenal. They face the Gunners at the Emirates in a potentially season-defining clash next weekend.

Should Man City win their remaining matches and overcome a two-goal deficit with Arsenal on goal difference in the run-in, they will be on course to lift the title.

Arsenal never looked in control against Bournemouth, and their goal came from a Viktor Gyokeres penalty. Beyond that, they created few chances and the Cherries deserved to take all three points, and boos were heard from supporters after the final whistle.

This is undoubtedly a major wobble, and Merson described the result as ‘terrible’ and put it down to a lack of energy from Mikel Arteta’s side.

Asked what has today done for Arsenal’s mental fortitude, Merson told Sky Sports: “Oh it’s smashed it to pieces.”

“All of a sudden, if Man City win their three games, they’re level on points.

“Plus, they’ve got two games to make the goal difference up. If they beat Arsenal, soon as you start winning 2-0, that’s a four-goal swing.

“You’ve got to keep away from the papers, press and social media because everyone will be saying, ‘here comes the melt.’

“That is a terrible result today. A real bad performance as well. No energy, no, ‘let’s go and take the game to Bournemouth.’ It was sloppy.”

‘A big punch in the face’

In a post-match interview, Arteta described the result as a ‘big punch in the face’ for his team, and admitted that certain things they did were ‘extremely bad.’

“Well, extremely disappointing. It’s a big punch on the face. That’s what I said to the boys,” Arteta said.

“And now it’s about how we react to that. Because game on, you’re going to require now a big speed, a lot of fight and very clear. How are we going to approach that?

“There’s no grey areas. We are in, we are out. And 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.

When asked if he’s worried about how his team will respond, Arteta added: “No, because I’ve seen them before in many scenarios and I’ve seen them for nine months.

“But today there were some very basic things that we did extremely bad against their team.

“When you do that, they’re going to capitalise, stretch the pitch. Again, it becomes very chaotic and very difficult to control.

“So, yeah, it’s a lot of good things that they’ve done, obviously, credit to them. But I think there’s a lot, a lot, a lot in our plate to look at ourselves.