Boss Mikel Arteta admits Arsenal need to “reset” before facing Nottingham Forest on Sunday, following Thursday night’s Europa League defeat.
The Reds make the trip to the Emirates Stadium buoyed by victory over Liverpool last time out. Taiwo Awoniyi’s goal amid an electric atmosphere at the City Ground ended a run of nine Premier League games without a win for Steve Cooper’s side.
Their next challenge is taking on the league leaders, who lost for just the second time this season on Thursday night. Arteta pointed to “worrying” aspects of his team’s display as they fell 2-0 away to PSV Eindhoven, and that leaves him with plenty to mull over going into the match against Forest.
READ MORE: Pundit makes 'stop and think' Forest comment ahead of Arsenal clash
READ MORE: Sean Dyche makes 'nightmare' admission as he explains Forest visits
The Gunners need to beat FC Zurich next Thursday to clinch top spot in their Europa League group and passage to the last 16 of the competition. But their manager says his focus is now on Cooper’s men.
“I’m very disappointed,” Arteta told Arsenal’s official website. “It’s the end of a long run where we won a lot of games. It is our first defeat (since the start of September) and we have to reset and analyse what happened.
“It’s really difficult to win every game in Europe. We are in a really good position. We’re disappointed but there’s no time to feel sorry for ourselves. We have to react. On Sunday, we have a really important game, and then we’ll look at Zurich.
“We have to be much better than we were. We knew what they were trying to do and the way we executed certain actions, the way we competed, it wasn’t good enough.”
Asked if he saw what he described as an “extremely poor” performance coming, Arteta added: “I don’t know. We have periods where we’ve been excellent and periods where we’ve suffered.
“For sure, we haven’t had the consistency for 95 minutes to maintain the level we want. That’s the next challenge and the next aim for this team.
“Today I think it was very different, right from the beginning. Even though we had periods where we controlled the game, I didn’t feel that we had the threat and the aggression that we’ve been playing at.
“That was worrying. In the second half, the moment something went wrong, we just went down and we didn’t really find moments to give us some hope to react and get something out of the game.”
What's your score prediction against Arsenal? Have your say in the comments below
READ NEXT:
