Arsenal won a thrilling encounter with Watford this afternoon to send us into fourth in the Premier League, but Mikel Arteta wasn’t completely happy with his side.
The game was thrilling from the off, with the home side having a goal disallowed in the opening exchanges, only to find themselves behind inside the opening five minutes of play. We weren’t ahead for long however after Cucho Hernandez levelled through an overhead kick.
We then scored either side of the break to move into a 3-1 lead before allowing the home side to pick themselves up once again, and Arteta has criticised his side for failing to take control when having the two-goal cushion.
“A lot of positive things in our general play, the chances we created, we scored some great goals, but we didn’t have total control of the game and I’m not happy with that,” Arteta told Arsenal Media after the final whistle.
“Once we scored the third one I think we should have played a completely different game. We didn’t manage to take control of the game to play the right passes in the right areas, we were rushed, we were broken [against], we were in transition moments where we didn’t finish the actions, we had transition moments against us and that creates physically a very demanding game, which you could see in some players. As well, the uncertainty that if they scored a goal then the game was on.
“Attacking, we have been much more consistent, much more creative, our cohesion, our link, our understanding of what to do in each moment is getting even better and today we scored three good goals.”
I think Watford deserve some credit for their performance, especially knowing that we arrived in top form, as they were impressive today. On today’s viewing, it is a shock to see that they are occupying the relegation spots at present, but Roy Hodgson has only just come in to try and steer them away from the foot of the table.
I’ll agree that we could definitely have done better in possession when we had our lead however, and don’t want to take much away from our performance either.
Is it important to analyse our failings after such a performance with many important weeks ahead of us?
Patrick
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Mikel Arteta’s FULL press conference after Watford win –