Arsenal midfielder Thomas Partey has questioned Mikel Arteta's suggestion that the Gunners demonstrated a lack of control in their Premier League victory at Watford.
Goals from Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli were enough for Arteta's men to beat their relegation-threatened opponents, but Cucho Hernandez briefly had Watford level and Moussa Sissoko's late effort made for a nervy last few minutes.
Despite his team picking up an important three points, Arteta was left frustrated by what he perceived as a lack of control after the north London side won a fourth successive Premier League game by a one-goal margin.
Partey wasn't sure that was the case, though, and the former Atletico Madrid midfielder has given a different verdict on how Arsenal handled their task.
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"A lot of positive things in our general play, the chances we created, we scored some great goals, but we didn’t have total control of the game and I’m not happy with that," Arteta told Arsenal media after the victory.
“Once we scored the third one I think we should have played a completely different game. We didn’t manage to take control of the game to play the right passes in the right areas.
“We were rushed, we were broken [against], we were in transition moments where we didn’t finish the actions, we had transition moments against us and that creates physically a very demanding game, which you could see in some players."
Partey's comments after the game paint a slightly different story, though, with the Ghanaian more forgiving of the performance he and his teammates delivered.
"We knew coming here it was not going to be easy. We tried to do our best and we tried to control the game," he said.
"At the end, we were able to score three goals. It's difficult here so we had to manage [the game] and try our best to get the three points. In the end that is what we did."
The three points on Sunday lifted Arsenal above Manchester United, who lost at Manchester City in the second game of the day.
Arteta's team have three games in hand over United and sixth-placed West Ham, and one over Tottenham Hotspur in seventh.
"I don’t like to look at the table a lot because we have games in hand, we’re going to play different fixtures and I know the objective and it’s only one, to try and improve tomorrow on what we’ve done today and go into the next match and that’s it," the Arsenal boss told the media after Sunday's win.
"I cannot control results and I cannot predict which matches we are going to win, draw or lose, it’s impossible. If I start to do that I think we’re going to lose focus in what we want to do."
