Arteta: "No time to feel sorry for ourselves"

After seeing us lose 2-0 in Eindhoven, Mikel Arteta believes he and our players need to bounce back quickly with two home games on the horizon in the next seven days.

Goals from Joey Veerman and Luuk de Jong saw us lose our first game in the Europa League this season, and the boss was left frustrated at the display but wants us to get it out of our system as soon as possible.

Speaking post-match, he said: “I’m very disappointed. It’s the end of a long run, where we won a lot of games and today is our first defeat [since the start of September] and we have to reset. Congratulations to PSV - they were the better team today. We were nowhere near our level and we know that in Europe, it’s very difficult to win [then].

“We didn’t get any control. We didn’t get the ball in the areas we wanted. We gave so many balls away, which allowed so many transitions, which was what they were looking for whenever they got in the right structure. They were on top of a lot of things that last week was different.”

The defeat means that we now have to beat FC Zurich next Thursday to secure the coveted top spot in the group and passage to the last-16 of the competition, and Arteta is pleased our good form earlier in the competition will give us a second chance.

Before then though, we have a chance to get back to winning ways in the Premier League against Nottingham Forest on Sunday, and the boss is hoping for a much-improved display in front of our own supporters. 

“It’s really difficult to win every game in Europe,” he added. “We are in a really good position. We’re disappointed tonight but there’s no time to feel sorry for ourselves. We have to react. On Sunday, we have a really important game, and then we’ll look at Zurich. 

“We have to be much better than we were today. We knew what they were trying to do and the way we executed certain actions, the way we competed, it wasn’t good enough.”