Arsenal ‘deserve’ to feel pain as West Ham deal huge title race blow

Mikel Arteta said Arsenal “deserve” to feel the “pain” of their defeat to West Ham United as the Gunners suffered a huge blow to their Premier League title hopes.

Jarrod Bowen’s goal on the stroke of half-time was followed by Myles Lewis-Skelly’s red card in the second half as Arsenal landed just two shots on target in the 1-0 defeat.

The Gunners lacked creativity and threat with Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli still unavailable due to injury and Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus out for the season. Makeshift forward Mikel Merino was unable to replicate his impact in last week’s 2-0 win at Leicester and it leaves Arsenal eight points behind leaders Liverpool.

Arteta and captain Martin Odegaard were adamant that the title is not yet over, with Liverpool heading to Manchester City on Sunday, but the Arsenal boss was scathing of his team’s attacking performance as they fell to a first home defeat of the season.

“The moment we got into the areas, then you have to unlock something, and we didn’t. That is down to me as well,” Arteta said. “That is my responsibility and I don’t want to take that all to the players. Today we weren’t at the level required to be convincingly better than the opponent. It is painful. We need to feel the pain today, we deserve it.”

Arsenal had failed to seriously test West Ham goalkeeper Alphonse Areola when Aaron Wan-Bissaka ran the length of the pitch and crossed to the unmarked Bowen to score what would the winning goal. Lewis-Skelly’s red card, for bringing down Mohammed Kudus when he was through on goal, gave Arsenal a mountain to climb and they never looked like scoring.

“We never got a grip of the game because we’re so inconsistent with the ball,” Arteta said. “We give so many balls away. We never get enough positive sequence of actions, one after the other, that could generate threat and momentum in the areas we want to conquer. That allowed the game to be the flick of a coin.

“We allowed them to run with simple giveaways. They are a dangerous team. They have the quality to deliver the moment. After that is becomes a difficult game. Then we get the red card and it’s a big mountain to climb. We try to react but we didn’t have specific quality moments.”

Arsenal travel to third-placed Nottingham Forest on Wednesday with their title challenge hanging by a thread but Arteta said there is still a long way to go despite the significant setback of losing at home.

“Tomorrow is another day,” he said. “We have to be disappointed with what happened today but there’s a lot to play for and it is still February. What happened today can happen to any team and we have to control what we can do.”

“It’s no time to feel sorry for ourselves,” added captain Odegaaard. “We’re going to be ready to strike back and make sure we do better. We lost today and we’re disappointed but there is a long way to go.”