Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta didn’t want to make excuses after his North London side lost 2-0 to newly-promoted Brentford to open the Premier League season at the Brentford Community Stadium on Friday.
The Gunners were without Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Alexandre Lacazette, and Thomas Partey for the opening 90 minutes but looked toothless aside from a few promising moments from Nicolas Pepe.
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Still, Arteta didn’t want to indulge the absences as a reason for the Gunners’ opening day setback.
“Extremely disappointed,” he said. “It’s very different to how we wanted to start the season. I don’t think we deserved anything different. We conceded a goal in isolated fashion but we didn’t win enough balls. The biggest worry is the threat we had in front of goal, how many times we arrived but didn’t [score].”
Shortly after tonight's match, Mikel Arteta joined Arlo, Lee and Graeme at the pitchside desk to discuss the result away at Brentford. #MyPLMorning pic.twitter.com/dmLMDaADKo
— NBC Sports Soccer (@NBCSportsSoccer) August 13, 2021
Arteta did issue a slight update on the status of Aubameyang and Lacazette, who were listed as “unwell” on the club’s Twitter feed before the game.
“I don’t know but certainly I don’t want to use any excuses,” Arteta said on a post-match Zoom call with journalists. “We had a team that we put out there that are good enough to play the way we want to play and capable of achieving a different result.”
It’s not going to get easier for the Gunners, who next face Chelsea and Man City with a League Cup trip to West Brom in between.
As for now, it’s a big “sorry” from Arteta to any worried Gooners.
Mikel Arteta asked about Arsenal fans being worried about this performance: "Apologies for the result. We know we have to improve. We have two big games coming up and we need different performances to get results." #AFC
— Joe Prince-Wright (@JPW_NBCSports) August 13, 2021
