Mikel Arteta has his work cut out to pick up his side for Brighton on Saturday after the “terrible” performance against Crystal Palace left his players dumbstruck.
It was not so much the manner of the defeat, which leaves Arsenal back outside those lucrative top-four places in the Premier League. It was the fact, as Martin Odegaard explained, nobody knows why it happened. Which raises concerns that it could happen again.
“A lot of things went wrong from the start, and it’s hard to say exactly why,” he said. “It was a terrible game from us, from start to finish. A lot of things went wrong. We weren’t really strong on the ball, we didn’t win any duels and we looked a bit slow from the start.
“We lacked the sharpness and aggressiveness we always have. We should have done much better. We played a really bad game, from the start to the end. It’s a hard one to take and really disappointing. It’s a tough night for us. It’s tough to go to Selhurst Park, and we knew that. But we didn’t play on the level we normally do.”
Mainly, it has to be said, because Crystal Palace did not allow them to. For all the mesmerising football Arteta’s young Gunners have produced in putting teams like Norwich, Leeds and Newcastle to the sword. The nine teams who have conceded the most goals this season, in fact.
Palace and Saturday’s visitors Brighton are cut from different cloth. They are among the top eight defences in terms of goals conceded. Arsenal’s record against those? A double over Wolves and a win when a dispirited Spurs side arrived for the north London derby at the Emirates and rolled over 3-1 under Nuno Espirito Santos. A couple of battling draws against Palace and Brighton in the earlier meetings.
Then six other games that have ended in abject defeat - average score 0-3. Against the very best teams, Arsenal are way off the pace. “There is no time to feel sorry for ourselves,” Odegaard said. “We have to learn from it, obviously. We have to look at the game, what we did wrong, and make sure it won’t happen again.”
