Mikel Arteta ‘gutted’ as Arsenal drop points away to Fulham
“I think we deserved to win from the beginning to the end. We did almost everything that we had to do to win it.”
JUST WHEN Mikel Arteta thought he had got Arsenal playing at their best again, along came Fulham again.
The Arsenal manager side effectively lost the Premier League title race by dropping five points against Fulham last season and their failure to win this match could prove just as costly.
They came back from a Raul Jimenez first half goal to equalise through William Saliba after the break and closed the gap on leaders Liverpool to six points.
The reality of that is Liverpool now have a game in hand and could easily restore a nine point gap at the top of the table.
Norwegian midfielder Martin Odegaard, captaining Arsenal for the 100th time, summed it all up pretty well afterwards when he said: “We dominated most of the game. The first half wasn’t great. We were a bit sloppy and lacked energy and power. The second half was a lot better. It’s frustrating.”
Pushed for his thoughts on the state of the title race, he added: “We have to focus on ourselves. We don’t care about the other teams [in the title race]. It’s a very long way to go. We’ve said hundreds of times we have to keep going game by game.”
Arteta could not hide his frustration and disappointment as he also referenced a wafer-thin VAR offside decision that denied Bukayo Saka a later winning goal.