New season, same old Arsenal!

Shaky at the back, toothless going forward, this all felt very familiar as Mikel Arteta’s men were soundly beaten 2-0 by Brentford. With games against Chelsea and Manchester City coming up this already looks like a long season ahead for the Gunners.

Afterwards Mikel Arteta cut a frustrated figure in his post match interview telling Arsenal Media:

on the performance…
It’s a very disappointing night. We needed to start in a very different way. The performance in the two halves was different. In the first half, we had periods where we weren’t ourselves. We got in trouble pretty easily in different ways with the long balls and the second balls. We were very disappointed with that. We reacted in the second half after going 1-0 down, when the crowd was right behind them. We created a lot of situations but not enough threat or shots on target to win a football match. When you concede a goal on a long throw, it then becomes a big task. Congratulations to Brentford on what they did, on what they’ve done to be where they are and for the fantastic crowd that they have right behind the team.

on what he’ll say to the players after the result…
We have to react, not find any excuses about players that weren’t here or our injured players, and look at ourselves and raise the level.

on Aubameyang and Lacazette – and the impact their absence had…
Congratulations to Brentford. I don’t want to use any excuses.

on Lokonga’s performance…
All the young players that played today – Flo had his debut, Gabriel Martinelli hasn’t played for a long time as he’s been with Brazil – they tried their best and it wasn’t enough [to get a result].

on what needs to change ahead of Chelsea…
It’s a completely different game. We will analyse what we did and have time to prepare that game.