Bruno Guimarães has apologised to Arsenal supporters following Saturday’s dreadful 3-0 defeat at Brighton, admitting the performance was simply unacceptable from a team with the Gunners’ ambitions.
Mikel Arteta’s side were comfortably second best at the Amex, with the 3-0 defeat bringing Arsenal’s perfect start to the season to an abrupt end.
Guimarães says Arsenal were nowhere near their level
Speaking after the defeat, Guimarães was refreshingly forthright about what had gone wrong.
As reported by football.london, the Brazilian said: “We were not good enough, so far off our level this time. We are very disappointed, we have to learn from our mistakes because today we were far away from our level.”
He added: “We were too sloppy with the ball, didn’t win any duels. We cannot accept this while wearing this shirt of a champion and we want to win the game.”
That assessment certainly echoes Arteta’s own post-match reaction, with the Arsenal boss equally scathing about a performance he insisted cannot be repeated.
An apology to the Arsenal supporters
Perhaps most importantly, Guimarães accepted that those who travelled to the Amex deserved better.
“We have to learn from our mistakes, wearing this shirt this is not acceptable, this is not the level we want but now we have time to focus on the national team as when we come back, we have to win games.
“We have to forget this and improve, we have to say sorry to the fans because it wasn’t good enough.”
There is little Arsenal can do about Brighton now except learn from it. The real test will be whether those words are reflected in the performance when the Gunners return after the international break.
Gooners, what did you make of Guimarães’ comments? Is this exactly the response you wanted to hear from the players after Brighton? Let us know in the comments below.
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We were well and truly schooled and beaten by the better team – no argument whatsoever. However, how we react to not only the loss, but the manner of it, will determine what kind of champions we are.
A loss can be a positive thing and i have no doubt at all that Arteta would’ve read them the riot act after that performance – and deservedly so!
We now have to learn from that and realise that as current champions, every team will be wanting to get a result against us – and no doubt they’ll be looking at just how Brighton beat us at our own game comprehensively, and will look to replicate that.
Winning the title is the easy part.
Defending it is a different game altogether and I for one, believe this game could serve as one of the best lessons we needed.
What do fellow Gooners think?
I agree with you ric
We were fortunate against Napoli and Sunderland that our anemic offense got us over the line. You could see problems coming; Havertz erratic in front of goal as usual, Saka has been shambles this year; in fact he’s been diabolical for a while but Arteta won’t drop him.
Pretending Eze or Madueke can play LW when they can’t consistently, and relying on defense to win the game eather than a sputtering offense.
Arteta should have benched several at halftime, and changes came too late, and Zubimendi and Merino to score goals and save a result?
Gyokeres dropped, but will Havertz ever see the doghouse? Will Saka get benched or will he continue to start and do so little?
Until they change the attack like they changed the defense, expect more of the same. Saw a comment about selling Saka; point worth discussing I believe. Saka has been a passenger far too often, going back to last year.
To show how sorry you are, why don’t you and the rest of the players reimburse the fans that paid good money to watch that no-show.
Bruno, sorry is never enough considering the manner of the defeat. If more sympathetic just reimburse the travelling fans and also ours which we expended for somethings to soothe ourselves from the after effects
My daughter was there and said it was the worst she has seen for absolute ages and we deserved everything we got…absolutely nothing but a chance for the doom and gloom merchants to forget what went on previously and scapegoat individuals.
The likes of Bruno do not become useless players after one bad game but as Durand points out, there are players who seem to be immune from MA’s criticisms.
Well done Bruno for saying the truth, wearing the shirt of the champions is an honour!!
As for reimbursing the fans I’m sure we all made some money from bets laid during last season?!?!
Ken1945,
My reimburse comment was tongue in cheek. As for anyone questioning Saka, we may have started the season well. But Saka continues to frustrate. Goals aside, he’s still not at it for me. And that’s not tongue in cheek.👍
The nature of the loss was the most concerning and while it’s only one game, it shakes the foundations a little. We have a squad of players that is virtually plug and play to rotate without dropping the level, but at the same time we were not able to change the direction of travel yesterday with the subs.
One game 🙄
When it becomes a habit I’ll join in with the calls to sack the manager, and to get rid of Saka, along with half the other regulars especially the Chelsea rejects.
Absolutely SueP – we have just lost our first game of the season and the absolute nonsense coming from some of our own fans is pathetic!!
Talk about being entitled fans!! They even want their money back!!
No wonder other club’s fans laugh at us!!🤣
Great to see the spuds holding everyone else up by the way 👍👍
Wasn’t it the Wolves game last season that shredded your patience Ken1945
Indeed SueP and at what point in the season did that game take place against a club bottom of the PL?
Of course I also didn’t demand my money back and pointed out that the while swuad and manager were to blame – no scapegoats if I remember correctly.
Its the reaction we want to see, not words. One bad game, is not the end of the world. Where we go to after it it is more important. A MASSIVE REACTION hopefully. The players AND the manager need to look at what they did, or more to the point, didn’t do.
I am getting absolutely fed up with this Brighton played brilliantly nonsense, no they played as they have been playing for most of the season, but without 4 of their best players. Our defence, which is normally so reliable did not connect at all, were losing balls in our own half and missing out on tackles and second balls, allowing Brighton all the time in the world to line up shots outside our penalty area, while failing to score at least 4 chances of an open goal the other end, inside their penalty area. They looked like they had their minds more on the international break than on the game in hand. The only ones who put any effort at all in were the Arsenal supporters. Well done to them, loud and clear, in very difficult circumstances.
We would’ve lost to the Spuds, if we’d turned up playing like that, and handed them their first PL victory. It was woeful, and stop saying Brighton were brilliant, they weren’t, we played like a division 4 team and we couldn’t hit a barn door in attack, and gave them aeons of time and galaxies of space to line up shots on our goal. I would’ve expected Lincoln City to have done better, no disrespect to them.
Spuds wouldn’t have pressed us so well and pressured us to the point we seemed to lose the plot.
Brighton executed their plan beautifully. We were terrible because they made us terrible.
I agree SG, they absolutely ripped us a new one!
That score-line was quite flattering, it could have been 4 or 5 nil.
While we may have been battered by a side who outplayed us, remember we have the international break to analyse what went wrong and how we can fix it. MLS has to start.
@TJ I get you, but I am sure the team would be hellbent playing sooner to right the wrongs.
Regarding MLS, I agree. But it’s hard with the depth we have now. It would be Bruno or MLS.
I’m not going to sit here and bash Arsenal, it’s only one game.
I do have concerns though and it is not purely because of this result.
Saka is not looking himself and hasn’t for a while now. I think some tough conversations will be taking place if this continues. I am sure he knows Madueke isn’t doing enough to threaten his spot, but I think if Dowman was given a few starts ahead of him, he will wake up a bit. Dowman is hungry for game time and he will be eager to impress every time he gets a chance.
On that note, I think Arteta needs to start trusting Dowman a bit more, he hasn’t let us down once.