Press conference

Arteta on derby defeat, goalscoring and Partey

“Very simple. We need to score goals. If not, it's unsustainable.”

Mikel Arteta was clear in his assessment of our 2-0 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur when he faced the media on Sunday evening.

 

Our recent form, missed chances and Thomas Partey’s injury were all covered during our post-match press conference.

 

Read on for every word from the boss:

 

on the performance…

In terms of the performance they did everything that I asked them to do, absolutely everything. We played a way that I believe we had to play this game. You look at all our stats, they were in our favour, but at the end of the day it is about putting the ball in the box. The first situation they had, from 30 yards they put it in the top corner. You have to applaud it. The second one, Thomas has to come off, we can not fill the gap that he should be in and we get done. Just before we had an open situation to score a goal as well. After that, in this moment, normally the team will fall. And the team got better after the first one, the team got better after the second one. They tried to generate situations. We had chances. We generated probably more than ever this season, put the ball in the box more than ever, we had numbers there but at the end of the day you have to score the goals. When they had half chances they scored and at the moment we haven’t. So to build something you need results. I take a lot of positives from the way we played. When you come here in this moment and play with a personality, and courage, and passion, the energy, the belief that the boys showed, but at the end it's a football match. You have to win it and we lost again today.

 

on how we turn it around…

By scoring goals. Very simple. We need to score goals. If not, it's unsustainable. It doesn't matter what we do in the other departments on the pitch, if we don't score goals, we can do nothing. So we need to put the ball in the net, urgently.

 

on the Thomas Partey situation...

I haven't seen the action repeated. But it is an injury and it is in the same area unfortunately. We don't know how bad it is. I was trying to push him but I don't think he realised the gravity of the situation when he left his position but that was probably because he was in a lot of pain. It's nothing we can do at the moment to resolve that.

 

on whether he is frustrated with Thomas or if it's hard to criticise...

It was too quick. We were through and I think it was a four against three situation for us to play the final ball and we were through. Suddenly, they are coming to attack us and Thomas is walking to me and I was trying to push him. I haven't spoken to him so I don't know exactly how it happened or if he felt something really serious. I will look at it and we will talk about it.

 

on putting in even more crosses than against Wolves but still not scoring...

You could see some of the chances that we created as well, there were crosses, cut-backs, we penetrated the penalty box on numerous occasions to find the last pass or the final ball and when the ball came through we didn't hit it or they blocked it. There were a lot of things happening. If we generate that every week, we will win football matches for sure. But at the moment it looks like we need a lot to score a goal.