Mikel Arteta said Arsenal must not use fatigue as an excuse following their defeat against Bournemouth as he challenged his players to rediscover their “enjoyment” of the game.
Arsenal missed a golden opportunity to move 12 points clear of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City after they produced a dismal display in a 2-1 loss to the Cherries at the Emirates.
The defeat marked Arsenal’s third-in-a-row on the domestic stage after their Carabao Cup final loss to City and shock FA Cup exit at Championship side Southampton.
Arsenal will look to bounce back immediately in the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final against Sporting Lisbon in London on Wednesday.
The fixture — with Arsenal holding a slender 1-0 advantage from the opening match — will be the north London club’s 54th of the season so far, just three more than City will have played.
A number of Arteta’s players appeared to be off the pace in their defeat against Bournemouth with captain Martin Ødegaard, star winger Bukayo Saka and full-back Jurriën Timber all absent through injury.
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But when asked if he sensed tiredness among his team, Arteta said:
“I don’t want to pull on those excuses because we’ve been playing so many games, every three days, and we’re going to have to continue to do that.
“That’s the context and that’s the scenario, and we have to embrace it and especially enjoy the opportunity.
“That’s one of the things that I didn’t see from the team, that level of enjoyment in certain moments and the fight that we have to have to really change the course of the game when it gets difficult.
“We’re going to have different contexts from here to June, and we need to be able to adapt and resolve all of them, if we want to achieve what we want to achieve.”
Viktor Gyökeres was one of only a handful of Arsenal players to leave Saturday’s defeat with any credit.
He scored a first-half penalty to take his tally to the season to 18.
Looking ahead to Arsenal’s second leg against his old side Sporting at the Emirates – with a possible semi-final against Paris Saint-Germain or Liverpool to come – Viktor Gyökeres said:
“We have a lot of important games ahead, and we need to embrace it and to enjoy playing those games.
“It’s a great game to have in a few days, so we just need to recover now, leave this behind and make a very good performance on Wednesday.”
