Arsenal suffered a home defeat to Chelsea on Sunday.
Mikel Arteta has claimed that Chelsea’s ‘energy’ levels were on a ‘different level’ to Arsenal’s on Sunday as the Gunners suffered a late 2-1 defeat to their London rivals at the Emirates Stadium.
In what was Arteta’s first home game in charge of Arsenal, it was looking likely that he was going to walk away with three points, but Chelsea struck two late goals in the final 10 minutes.
A lot has been made at how Arsenal have been playing in recent months, and even years to go further back, as many fans saw encouraging signs in such a short space of time under their former midfielder.
After the game, Arteta stated that Arsenal were the ‘better team’ during the first period, as he felt that from a tactical standpoint, his team started to drop ‘too deep’ during the game.
“I think in the first half we were the better team,” Arteta told Sky Sports. “We did all the right things that we were trying to do. It is very hard to dominate all periods of the game against this team.
“But, for me, it was that we started to defend too deep. I think energy-wise they are at a different level than us, at the moment. We are trying to change that by encouraging them to play much higher up the pitch and we started to have a lot of difficulties.”
Arsenal are sitting in the bottom half of the Premier League table and are seemingly paying for their early-season problems under Unai Emery.
Whilst a Champion League finish is out of the window, they will be still hoping to finish in a Europa League spot, as they take on Manchester United on New Year’s Day.
Seven points separate Arsenal and United in the table, and a win for the Gunners could see them climb into the top half, but if they lose then they could drop as low as 15th in the table.
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