Mikel Arteta has his work cut out to pick up his side for Brighton on Saturday after the “terrible” performance against Crystal Palace left his players dumbstruck.
It was not so much the manner of the defeat, which leaves Arsenal back outside those lucrative top-four places in the Premier League. It was the fact, as Martin Odegaard explained, nobody knows why it happened. Which raises concerns that it could happen again.
“A lot of things went wrong from the start, and it’s hard to say exactly why,” he said. “It was a terrible game from us, from start to finish. 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.
