Martin Odegaard has told his Arsenal team-mates they can’t afford to feel sorry for themselves after being humbled by Crystal Palace and suffering a double injury blow.
Arsenal had the chance to leapfrog rivals Tottenham back into fourth in the Premier League with a point at Selhurst Park last night, but instead they were beaten 3-0 by Patrick Vieira’s side.
To make matters worse, Kieran Tierney missed the game with a knee injury that Arsenal fear could end his season and Thomas Partey limped off with a muscular problem.
The Gunners are still in a strong position in the race to qualify for the Champions League as they are level on points with Tottenham, who will they will face in a rearranged derby on May 12, and have a game in hand.
And Odegaard said: “We should have done much better, but there is no time to feel sorry for ourselves. We have to get back to work and think about the next game already. Today is tough, but we have to look forward. We have to learn from it obviously.
“We have to look at the game, what we did wrong, and make sure it won’t happen again. It was a terrible game from us, from start to finish. Maybe a bit better in the last 10 minutes, but in general I think it was a really bad performance.
“A lot of things went wrong. We weren’t really strong on the ball, we didn’t win any duels and we looked a bit slow from the start. We lacked the sharpness and aggressiveness we always have.
“I think the fans were again brilliant here, cheering us on and I feel sorry for them. We have to apologise and we have got to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Hopefully next game we are back with a win.”
Arsenal and Tottenham are neck and neck in the race to finish fourth, with all eyes on their clash next month.
A date for the derby, which was postponed in January due to Arsenal’s squad being decimated by Covid, injuries and international call-ups, was finally confirmed yesterday, but Odegaard is focusing on the present.
“That’s really far ahead. We have to take it game by game, as we have said many times before,” he said.
“The next game for us is Brighton and that’s all our focus at the moment. We take it game by game and we will see in the end.”
