{"id":477054,"date":"2026-02-13T09:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T09:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/477054\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T09:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T09:45:08","slug":"mikel-arteta-admits-arsenal-could-not-handle-brentfords-set-piece-chaos-premier-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/477054\/","title":{"rendered":"Mikel Arteta admits Arsenal could not handle Brentford\u2019s set-piece \u2018chaos\u2019 | Premier League"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mikel Arteta admitted that Arsenal weren\u2019t ruthless enough to beat a physical Brentford team as they missed the chance to restore their six-point lead over Manchester City.<\/p>\n

Noni Madueke\u2019s header broke the deadlock in west London in the second half but Keane Lewis-Potter<\/a> equalised 10 minutes later from a long throw by Michael Kayode to set up a grandstand finale that saw both sides spurn chances to win it.<\/p>\n

Arsenal, who badly missed William Saliba and Kai Havertz after they were ruled out with illness and injury respectively, now have a four-point lead over City with 12 games to play and Arteta acknowledged that they had failed to cope with Brentford\u2019s threat from set-pieces.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to win here, you\u2019re going to have to be really ruthless in both boxes and today we lacked that,\u201d said Arteta. \u201cThey are exceptional at what they do. The chaos that is in and around that ball is very, very difficult to defend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether he was concerned that City have started to cut the gap, he added: \u201cWe are going to be preparing to win every single match and the only thing that we can do is focus on that and raise the levels collectively. That\u2019s going to carry on like this until May, regardless if we play before [City] or after them. It\u2019s just the things that we have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eberechi Eze was substituted at half-time on his first Premier League start for two months and Arteta believes the England forward is still adapting after signing<\/a> from Crystal Palace in the summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not easy when you move to a new club,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s always like this. When you play against a team that is like this and the ball is a lot of times not on the floor and you have to be constantly breaking the play, especially for attacking and creative players, it\u2019s more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Brentford manager, Keith Andrews, felt that Arsenal\u2019s Gabriel Magalh\u00e3es should have been shown a second yellow card for a foul on Dango Ouattara but was delighted with his side as they strengthened their grip on seventh place.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a performance filled with grit, personality, character and bravery,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had to try and cause a bit of chaos and that\u2019s what we did with our set-pieces and general play. I just love watching us play.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mikel Arteta admitted that Arsenal weren\u2019t ruthless enough to beat a physical Brentford team as they missed the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-477054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}