Arsenal suffered yet another home defeat at the hands of Manchester United after losing 2-1 at the Emirates stadium. This was despite the team from North London dominating for much of the 90 minutes. Mikel Arteta has reflected on his disappointing result by saying that Arsenal need to show much more consistency especially in the home matches. He says that scoring goals is what counts most in football and this has been proved once again. The defeat puts further pressure on manager Arsene Wenger, who has been able to survive long in the job merely on the fact that Arsenal have consistently qualified for the Champions League.
The club’s Champions League qualification for next season is thrown into doubt once again as a result of this defeat. Arteta’s own future at Arsenal is under a cloud of doubt since he is thought to be angry with the fact that the club will not provide no more than 12 month contracts for players over 30. At 32 years of age, Arteta reckons that experienced players have a valuable role to play in the success of the club. Inability to reach a conclusion could see Arteta departing the Emirates in the summer. The Spaniard joined Arsenal in 2010 from Everton for £ 10 million.
“We played our best game of the season, but it is about being ruthless for sure because when you are inside the box, and you cannot manage to score in that many situations, you cannot expect to win a football game.When you lose, there is something which is not going well, but we cannot forget (what we have done well) as that creates a lack of belief and confidence if you just take a lot of negatives at the end when you have lost the game,” said Arteta.