Arteta reacts to Bournemouth defeat

Mikel Arteta gave us his thoughts after Saturday's 2-0 defeat to Bournemouth.

We went down to 10 men when William Saliba was sent off for a foul on Evanilson in the 30th minute and second-half goals from Ryan Christie and Justin Kluivert secured the three points for the hosts.

“A very sad evening, very disappointed with the result, it was again a really difficult context,” Mikel said. “It's hard enough to play 11 against 11 here, we made life very difficult for ourselves again, playing with 10 men for 60-70 minutes but I can't fault the effort of the players, how much they wanted, how much they tried.

“But in this league, the third time it's happened in eight games, it's just an accident waiting to happen, it's very difficult.

“It's very difficult because obviously you don't plan for it, especially that early, so any solution, especially at certain positions becomes more difficult with the amount of injuries we have. But we tried, and it was unbelievable, the attitude and the work rate and how the guys tried to do it.

“We understood it better and better, we conceded nothing but an action at the start of the second half and with 0-0, our biggest moment of the game was when Gabi [Martinelli] One on one with the goalkeeper and we didn't score and at the other end, we conceded a set piece.”

Mikel also had some words for our supporters, who were in full voice throughout the match at the Vitality Stadium.

“Thank you very much for the trip and the reception to the players,” he said. “Even though we lost the game, they could see, they could see how hard we tried. Today we have ourselves to blame.

“Football is a game of mistakes, today we made two big mistakes that cost us the game and we couldn't turn it around and we have to move on and learn our lessons.”