Arteta slams Arsenal players after 'worst performance of the season'

Tom Weber

• Updated: 1 Jan 2024 13:40 GMT
• 3 min read

Mikel Arteta did not hold back when assessing his side's 2-1 defeat to Fulham.

Arsenal succumbed to their second defeat on the bounce when they were downed by Fulham at Craven Cottage on New Year's Eve. Bukayo Saka opened the scoring but goals from Raul Jimenez and Bobby De Cordova-Reid were enough for the home side to see off Arteta's man.

After only mustering a draw with Liverpool and losing to West Ham just a few days before Fulham, the Gunners are winless in three Premier League outings. Naturally, fans have begun to panic, with some prematurely claiming that their side is already out of the title race.

While it is way too early to count Arsenal out, their last few results are very worrying but more so than that, it was the performance against Fulham that left Mikel Arteta scratching his head.

"We weren't good enough. Simple as that," the Spaniard told Sky Sports. "We lost the game three days ago [against West Ham], we fully deserved to win because we were so good. And today we were nowhere near the level."

'Worst performance of the season'

"We conceded two very similar goals," Arteta continued, "we gave the ball away and then the organisation in our box and set-plays...we didn't generate enough today, our rhythm wasn't good enough in attack, and defensively we were second best in every action. You have to play 100 minutes in the league so it's not enough to play a few actions."

"It's a really sad day because today we didn't deserve to win the game. We never got going [after changing to 3-5-2 late on in the second half] because we gave every ball away, and we could not dominate the direct play so we didn't do any of those two and it's very difficult to generate any momentum. Credit to Fulham as well."

"We had a great performance against Liverpool. We had a great performance against West Ham and didn't win. Today was the one you have to isolate, because that was the worst performance of the season."