Mikel Arteta warned that Arsenal have to “drastically improve” their defense on set pieces and avoid conceding cheap goals to stay on track this season.
The Gunners pulled off an entertaining 2-2 draw in their Europa League round of 16 first leg with Sporting Lisbon on Thursday.
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Guillermo Saliba He opened the scoring with a header in the 22nd minute of fabio scallopSporting’s corner before Sporting scored a similar goal at the other end 12 minutes later when Gonçalo Inácio set himself free to look home marcus edwards‘ delivery.
paulinho gave the home side the lead 10 minutes into the second half with a point-blank shot before Morita Hidemasa He suffered the misfortune of diverting Xhaka GraniteGo into your own goal just after the hour mark.
Opponents have scored five goals against Arsenal in dead-ball situations since the World Cup, and Bournemouth found the net with a routine straight from kick-off at the Emirates Stadium last weekend.
And Arteta, who made six changes to his starting XI ahead of Sunday’s Premier League trip to Fulham, said: “We’re conceding too many simple goals. We talk about the importance of the slots, especially in a competition when you’re in or out. .
“Today we didn’t defend well enough and we also have to be better at threatening opponents. But of course you have an opponent there. We’ve played some really emotional games recently.”
“We made a lot of changes today and sometimes it takes time to get that cohesion and you could feel in the first 15 minutes that it needed some time to adjust and click. However, if we don’t expose them, that will never happen.
“Sometimes opponents are very good at what they do. When they get the ball in the right space it’s just half an inch, sometimes whether you’re taking that header out of the box or going in. It’s certainly something we need to drastically improve.” in the next games if we want to continue winning”.