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Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has admitted he is concerned about the team’s failure to score goals after producing another blank shot against Leeds United.
The Gunners could only muster a 0-0 draw at Elland Road with Nicolas Pepe’s early second-half dismissal paralyzing the team, which has failed to hit the back of the net in four of its last five Premier League games.
Arteta’s men have endured a bumpy campaign so far and are in eleventh place after nine games, and the Spaniard said Arsenal’s current lack of power hampered their path to becoming a “superior team.”
“It worries me, obviously, because we need goals and we need a lot of goals to win football games and be the best team we want to be, without that it is impossible,” he said after the game.
It doesn’t matter how good we are on the defensive. It is not a lack of attacking players that we have, because we have attacking players on the field all the time, but we need some moments when we have to make decisions earlier, better and they have to be more ruthless.
“But it’s the hardest thing in football and sometimes we go through these patches and we have to overcome them and I have to help the players do it as quickly as possible.”
Arsenal’s top scorer is star forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang with just two Premier League goals, and the Gabon forward has scored once since September.
He struggled again and failed to stamp his mark on the game, but Arteta said his front row showed flashes of quality in the first half. However, he admitted that his team found it difficult to take on Marcelo Bielsa’s high-pressure team.
In some moments it worked very well. We had a patch in the first half, a 25 minute patch where we were really good, efficient, pushed high, created some really good chances and made it really difficult for him.
Then there was a time in the 15 or 20 minutes of the first part where we began to give the ball away, we did not control certain spaces against it and they suffocated us, which they were always going to do. They did it against all the Premier League teams.
‘It is impossible to dominate this team for 90 minutes. And then in the second half, when you expect things to adjust and get better, we go through 10 guys and obviously it’s a mountain to climb. ”
Arsenal’s job of scoring goals was certainly made much more difficult after Pepe’s smug header on Ezgjan Alioski in just 51 minutes of the game.
Things came to a head when the pair exchanged shoves before Pepe made the decisive contact, with Alioski quickly falling to the ground. Anthony Taylor then gave him an early bath after reviewing the images on the courtside monitor.
Arteta called the £ 72 million man’s conduct “unacceptable” after giving him an exceptional start and a chance to impress.
‘It is unacceptable. I told him it was unacceptable. We knew the level of intensity, aggression and how lively Leeds is in every action.
“You have to be able to deal with that because it is part of the plan against this team.”
Source: m.allfootballapp.com
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