Declan Rice says that we need to demand more from ourselves following Sunday's 2-1 defeat away to Fulham.
After taking an early lead courtesy of Bukayo Saka, we allowed the home side to complete a turnaround at Craven Cottage thanks to goals from Raul Jimenez and Bobby De Cordova-Reid.
“Being brutally honest, it’s not good enough," Declan said after the game. "The standards that we’ve set over the course of the season so far have not been met in the last two games.
"The loss at home to West Ham was tough to take and today we really wanted to bounce back and we had that on our mind. We really wanted to go out and started quick, went 1-0 up and then it’s about pushing, it’s about mentality, it’s about desire, knowing you’re going to fight for every ball.
"In the end, they won more duels, won more battles and sat in tight and in the end we weren’t good enough. When you’re not good enough in the Premier League you lose games and it’s a really tough one to take.
"It’s easy saying that we should kick on but Fulham are a good side. We still had plenty of the ball and some chances. Martinelli put one wide and we had one in the second half, but it’s one of those days and it’s really tough to take.
"You can see that we want to be competing for the Premier League, we want to be up there fighting and the last few results haven’t been up to the standards that we’ve set and the standards the manager has set. We’ve let ourselves down today and we’ve let the fans down.”
Despite the back-to-back defeats, Declan insists that there is no need to panic as we go into the new year.
“Of course not. It’s not ideal when you want to be a top team, are striving to be a top team and want to be top players, you need to demand more from each other. We need to demand more from ourselves, push each other more when times are going tough.
"Times like now are times when we stick together. It’s been a great year for Arsenal all round and we go into the new year with positivity. We play Liverpool and try to bounce back in the FA Cup now.”
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.
