That’s all for today. Thanks for your company and emails – goodnight!
Mikel Arteta's reaction
First of all you have to congratulate Man Utd for the victory. It happened in a really strange way, to be fair, because we were very dominant in the first half an hour. We scored the goal and had two more brilliant chances to score – and then we gave them the goal, which is very unusual from our side. That changed the momentum and the energy a little bit.
After that we dropped our standard a bit; we have to do much better with the ball. And then they had two magic moments from Dorgu and Cunha – credit to them because in big games you need those moments. We were carrying a little bit of that negativity, and the lack of fluidity we needed.
It’s a really painful one. But now is the time to be very, very close to the players who have given us so much joy and so many [great] performances, and to support them.
They are very dangerous and we knew that. We have to learn from it. Defeats are part of winning, and you have to take them like this because [the team] need to be reminded how good they are.
I hope I don’t have to [send a message to the supporters]. When we win, it’s easy. When we draw or lose, that’s when we have to show togetherness, the unity, the energy to get where we want. Defeats are part of that for us and for any team.
We were brilliant at Stamford Bridge [in the Carabao Cup] and against Inter, one of the best teams in Europe. Sometimes it’s not your day and you don’t do the simple things as well as you need to – and on top of that, look at the goals they scored. Sometimes you have to give credit to the opponents as well.
[Did you think Dorgu handled it?] I haven’t looked at it. It’s fine, it’s gone, we can do nothing about it.
I take responsbility for everything. We move on and in three days we have another game.
[Do the players need to be freed up?] I don’t think so. Four days ago, how free and fluid they looked in Milan. It was unbelievable. No excuses. We accept the defeat, we congratulate the opponent and we move forward.
