Arteta says it should have been 'a very, very different scoreline' – So what went wrong?

So, the curse of Unai Emery continued and his Aston Villa side completed the double over us, and could have cost us the League title.

We couldn’t use the excuse that we played Bayern Munich on Tuesday because Aston Villa played on Thursday, so they should have been even more tired than us. We can’t blame our (very small) injury list as Villa were missing most of their first team!

So, why did we lose at home to Aston Villa? It would appear that a very disappointed Mikel Arteta thinks that we should have already won the game before half time. The boss said: “We’re really disappointed and frustrated because of the way we played the first half and the amount of chances and situations we created, how dominant we were and it should have obviously been a very, very different scoreline.

“We didn’t capitalise on that and in the second half we struggled much more to get momentum. It was a much more even game, and we dropped the level. They increased it and we conceded very poor goals that cost us the game.

“We didn’t score any goals and on top of that, we conceded two goals that are nowhere near the level that we’ve been at. That’s the reason why we lost the game and you have to congratulate the opponent as well when you lose the game.”

Declan Rice feels the same, that we simply failed to take our chances. He said: “When you create that many chances and have that many one-on-ones with the keeper or you get to the byline and you don’t quite get the cross, or don’t quite get the finish it’s very disappointing,”

“We’ve got to be taking one of those chances because in games like this, teams like Villa have got quality and can come back to haunt you and they did today.

Well, it must have been very hard for him to understand why we didn’t turn up, but the question that I would like to ask Mikel tonight is; “Do you still think we need a clinical striker this season?”