Mikel Arteta was in philosophical mood following our 2-0 defeat to West Ham United on Thursday.
Despite racking up 30 shots over the 90 minutes, we were left frustrated and fell to our first home defeat of the season.
After the game the boss was asked about the game, missed opportunities, VAR decisions and more in his post-match press conference.
Here’s a full transcript…
On the game…
Congratulate West Ham and praise my players, that’s what I can say. This is football. You look what we’ve done in the game, how much we generated in the game and to see the result is very disappointing, but they were better than us in both boxes. They had two shots, with the penalty, three, we had thirty. I don’t know how many touches in the box, how many situations, how many open goals to score and we haven’t. In football you have to do that better if you want to win, and today we haven’t won because of that and for the rest, the team kept trying and had an incredible attitude again.
On missing chances….
It’s what it is, we have to try to generate. If we don’t score goals in thirty shots, we have to do fifty or sixty to try to score ,it’s the only thing. I cannot imagine a game that you have more dominance, more touches in the box, less situations of the opponents against a really good West Ham side, but today wasn’t enough to win the game.
On frustrations from losing after dominating the stats…
It is, but this is football, when the team generates that much normally you are going to win games and that’s the way we have done it, because as well against Brighton we generate so much, against Liverpool as well. But we score goals in different ways and we have to make another step in that area to win the game more comfortably for sure, because today the team deserves to win the game, there’s no question about that.
On the first goal being awarded after a VAR check…
I haven’t seen it, the only thing they are saying is that it’s not conclusive the images that they have, it’s just a shame that with the technology that we have that it’s not that clear that we can say yes that it was out or in. It’s done, it’s gone, nothing we can do about it now.
On potential need for new signings in January to solve issues with chances…
What we have is the players that we have, it’s the players that I love the most. What we have to do is try to get better situations, and more training, put them there and raise their confidence and that’s it because they have done it.
On players lacking confidence in front of goal…
I don’t think it’s that. You hit the post, or you hit the ball and it’s half a centimetre and you have I don’t know how many shots or someone blocks the shot and it doesn’t come in. We miss a lot of situations when we have to pick the right pass, there are two players free in the box and I can recall five, six actions of that and that’s what makes the difference to win the games.
On the camera angles provided to rule the first goal in play…
I don’t know but the technology we have at the moment is not good enough to give us that answer. So what we have to do is without that, win the game with the amount of situations that we generate in the game it should have been more than enough.
On having a record 77 touches in the box and not scoring…
They were great, we have to put the ball in the net and win it, and as well because the two situations in the box we have to defend in the box, we didn’t defend it well enough. It’s a team that are really good in the box, with the timing, the quality they have with the front players arriving and that’s what made the difference today unfortunately and it is a very disappointing night for us because I think we should have got much more from the game.
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