Arsenal slumped to back-to-back defeats in the Premier League after falling to Tottenham in the North London derby on Sunday. Mikel Arteta told Sky Sports after the game that unless they sort out their goal-scoring form, things won’t change.
The Gunners had a disappointing night as they could not break down the Spurs defence effectively. They kept putting in cross after cross, but that just did not seem to work. A lack of creativity in the midfield also led to them struggling to create clear cut chances.
One of the biggest problems the Gunners have had this season has been a lack of goals. They have scored only ten so far, fourth worst in the Premier League, and will need to drastically improve in this regard. If that doesn’t happen, the fortunes of the club are not going to turn around.
Arsenal have been held scoreless in five of their 11 league games thus far.
Arteta told Sky Sports that he is aware of this problem. He went on to say that it didn’t matter what they did elsewhere on the pitch unless they can score. The Spaniard also had this to say regarding the goal drought:
“By scoring goals. Very simple. We need to score goals. It is not sustainable.
“It doesn’t matter what we do in other departments if we don’t score, we need to put the ball into the net urgently. At the moment it looks like we need a lot to score a goal.
“”In terms of the performance, they did everything that I asked them to do. We played the way we had to play this game. All the stats are in our favour, at the end of the day it is about putting the ball in the back of the net.”
Once the Gunners start to score on a more regular basis, the players will regain their lost confidence, and ultimately, it will lead to more favourable results.
They currently sit in 15th place and unless Mikel Arteta sorts out the situation soon, the season is heading towards a complete disaster.
This doesn’t seem to be the case in Europe, where some of the youngsters have been playing with zip in attack. They have been scoring freely and while the defences in the Premier League are a different kind of challenge, it would certainly help to play with that level of freedom.
Arsenal are on a slippery slope right now and unless they can find a way to start scoring again, and soon, things will not change. They are slipping further away from the Champions League qualification spots and they need to pick up the slack ASAP.