Martin Odegaard points finger at Arsenal team-mates with two-word blast

Arsenal lost 2-1 at home to Bournemouth on Saturday, meaning that they’ve now won just one of their last five Premier League matches as they bid to seal second place

Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard has told his team-mates that Saturday’s dismal 2-1 loss at home to Bournemouth was ‘not acceptable’. The Gunners threw away yet another lead on a day when they could’ve taken a huge step towards qualifying for next season’s Champions League.

Not only do Arsenal travel to face Paris Saint-Germain in the semi-finals of the competition on Wednesday, trailing 1-0 on aggregate, but Mikel Arteta’s side have Liverpool and Newcastle in their next two Premier League games. That’s perhaps why Odegaard was so angry post-match.

Odegaard, who assisted Declan Rice’s opening goal, bemoaned when speaking to Sky Sports: “Massive disappointment. I think we started the game pretty well – we got the goal and felt like we controlled pretty much everything, but they score and we lose control of the game.

“We never find the rhythm after that, it is too chaotic and too sloppy from us. The second half is not acceptable. We have to move on as we have a massive game coming up. We have to get ready for that and analyse this game as well.

“This is what we want – we want to compete in every competition. We wanted to come here and do a good game and win, but that wasn’t the case. It is a massive game on Wednesday, but we have to use today to be ready and beat PSG on Wednesday.”

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His boss, Arteta, echoed that sentiment with his own comments. “We had so many big spaces and big opportunities to score but we didn’t. When you concede goals from set pieces it’s very difficult to earn the three points,” the Gunners manager admitted.

“We don’t finish the actions and you give so many simple balls away. They (Bournemouth) run and in transition they are really good. When we had them we didn’t kill them. We gave them hope.

“We’ve lost points here to [Crystal] Palace, Fulham and Brentford – it’s something we need to improve. We had so many opportunities, we had big spaces, opened them up but we needed to score and we didn’t.

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“And when you defend the box like we did and concede two goals from set pieces at this level it’s very difficult to earn the three points. We didn’t kill them, we gave them hope and they scored from two set-pieces and it became very chaotic.

“It didn’t create positive momentum but it’s created a lot of anger, frustration, rage, disappointment – let’s use all that for Wednesday.”

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