With the traditional December fixture pile-up in full swing, Martin Odegaard has urged his teammates not to dwell on our 1-0 loss to Aston Villa.
Having strung together six wins on the bounce before this encounter with Unai Emery’s red-hot Villans, we came unstuck at Villa Park with John McGinn netting the all-important opener just six minutes in.
From that point onwards, it was virtually one-way traffic as we probed for an equaliser, with Martin seeing a couple of great chances go begging, while the officials intervened the two times we had the ball in the net.
But with Champions League and Premier League games on the horizon next week, our skipper wants our players to move on quickly and start another strong run of form heading into 2024.
“I think we didn’t deserve to lose this game, but at the same time, we could have done better,” Martin assessed. “Especially in front of the goals. We gave them an easy goal and we were a bit sloppy in front of goal as well, so it’s annoying and frustrating.
“We have to look to the next one. The games are coming so quickly now so it’s no time to feel sorry for ourselves. We have to get back to working hard to improve and bounce back in the next game, and that’s what we’re going to do now.”
On the occasion of his 100th Premier League appearance, Martin was left disappointed that he didn’t manage to get on the scoresheet, twice testing Emiliano Martinez in the Villa net during the first half before miscuing with the goal gaping after the restart.
On another day, he knows that we would have taken some of the chances we created, but having pushed a Villa team boasting an incredible home record all the way, he is still left wondering how we managed to lose the contest.
“It was maybe not our best game, but we were still the better team,” he added. “I don’t think they created too much apart from the goal they scored, and as I said we had a few big ones that we missed, me included, and that’s annoying.
“So, I think we did enough to at least get a point, but it didn’t happen today. We have to move on, we have to learn from it and improve.
“They’re a great team, especially here at home. The record they have here speaks for itself. I thought we did enough to get a result, but today wasn’t the day.”
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
