Arteta - We need to practice and take more risks

It was another frustrating night on Monday as we lost at Everton, despite creating a host of chances.

Mikel Arteta freely admits we need to improve our attacking game - so how do we do that?

"Practice it more and encourage the players to take more risks, put the ball more often in the box when we have the opportunity to have more bodies there and start to score the big chances that we have, like the game against Everton," he said.

"It’s always a combination, who creates the chances for [the forwards], it’s themselves, it’s the team, it’s the collective capacity for the team to arrive better in conditions in the final third, it’s the numbers in the box, we can look at everything, but the reality is that we need more goals.

"I don’t think we did [sit back and try to protect the lead], sometimes teams can change their way of playing after conceding a goal, we don’t and we go for the second one and the third one and we’re not gonna change that."

It's a big game for us against Southampton on Saturday, so what is the current mentality of the team?

"After losing against Liverpool we reacted really well and beat Newcastle," Arteta said. "I think we deserved much more against Manchester United, if not a win then at least a draw, then against Everton we had periods where we punished ourselves and I don’t think we deserved to lose either.

"That’s the thing, we need to increase the level of those performances and when we have those performances during matches, we need to win the matches and close the games down."