Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has taken responsible for his side’s 3-1 to West Ham which saw the Gunners knocked out of the Carabao Cup.
Goals from Jarrod Bowen, Mohammed Kudus and an own goal from Ben White condemned Arsenal to defeat, and their subsequent exit from the Carabao Cup in the process.
Arteta’s much changed side started on the back-foot immediately and fell behind early on when White headed into his own net from Bowen’s corner. The Spaniard will feel hard done by the lack of VAR after Aaron Ramsdale’s shirt was pulled back by Tomas Soucek. When asked whether the goal would have been disallowed if VAR was available, Arteta was stark in his response:
“For sure. If there’s VAR, there’s no goal for sure. I understand for the referees it’s difficult because of the angle and the number of people there but again I don’t want to use that as an excuse.
“We can still compete for the ball much better than we did and in that position. Obviously that takes [away] something in the game which is very important, momentum.”
Kudus extended West Ham’s advantage early in the second half, before Bowen added further gloss to the home side’s joy with a deflected strike which was too much for Ramsdale to handle. Substitute Martin Odegaard scored late into stoppage time, but the damage had already been done.
Artetanrefused to be draw towards excuses for his side’s poor performance, with an important match against Newcastle United coming up on Saturday.
“I’m responsible for that. We’re out of the cup and we wanted to play a very different game.
“Especially we wanted to compete in a very different way, the we discussed for 48 hours, in a very different way to what we’ve done.
“What you did three days ago is irrelevant, what is going to happen tomorrow is the most important thing. We have to use this defeat, this pain to prepare the best way to go to Newcastle and win.”
West Ham progress to face Liverpool, whilst Arsenal’s focus turns to their next two matches in two different competitions, first Newcastle then Spanish side Sevilla in the Champions League.
