Arteta reacts to Bournemouth defeat | Interview | News

Mikel Arteta gave us his thoughts following Saturday’s 2-0 defeat away to Bournemouth.

We were reduced to 10 men in the 30th minute when William Saliba was sent off for a foul on Evanilson, and second-half goals from Ryan Christie and Justin Kluivert ensured the hosts took all three points.

“A very sad evening, very disappointed with the result, it was a really tough context again,” Mikel said. “It’s hard enough to play here 11 against 11, we made life very difficult for ourselves again, playing for 60-70 minutes with 10 men but I cannot fault the effort of the players, how much they wanted, how much they tried.

“But in this league, it’s the third time it’s happened in eight games, it’s just an accident waiting to happen, it’s too difficult.

“It’s very difficult because obviously you haven’t planned for that, especially that early, so any solution, especially with the amount of injuries we have in certain positions becomes tougher. But we tried, and it’s unbelievable, the spirit and the work rate and how the boys tried to do it.

“We understood it better and better, we didn’t really concede nothing apart from one action at the start of the second half and with 0-0, we had the biggest moment in the game when Gabi [Martinelli] is one on one with the goalkeeper and we didn’t manage to score the goal and in the other end, we concede a set piece.”

Mikel also had a few words for our supporters, who were in full voice throughout the whole match at Vitality Stadium.

“Thank you so much for travelling and for the reception to the players,” he said. “Even though we lost the game, they can see it, they can see how much we tried. Today, we have to blame ourselves.

“Football is a sport of errors, today we made two big errors that has cost us the game and we couldn’t turn it around and we have to move on and learn the lesson.”