Arteta – “I like action, not reaction”

Mikel Arteta was far from happy at the final whistle on Sunday, despite seeing his team fight back from 2-0 down to earn a point at Anfield.

We went into the interval two goals down against the newly-crowned champions, after conceding twice within the space of two first-half minutes.

And even though we fought back to extend our unbeaten league record against Liverpool to six matches, the manager said our standards in the opening 45 minutes did not reach the expected level.

“I'm very disappointed,” Arteta said afterwards, “because we can talk about our reaction and the second half, what we've done, but I don't like that at all. I like action, not reaction. And what I saw from the team in the first 25 minutes is nowhere near the standards that we require, especially in things that we can control and we have to do.

“And that's fully my responsibility. And yes, the way we played afterwards, we reacted again with a lot of injuries and playing in this atmosphere and with how much hurting we went through in the last few days after the PSG outcome. Learn from it.”

Despite his anger at the first-half display though, Arteta said there were positives to take from the comeback, and seeing out the draw after Mikel Merino was red carded late on.

“Yes, but this is us. This is what we can do. And we play again for the sixth time in the season with 10 men and we have half of our starters not available. And we can still perform that way.”

Now we have two matches remaining as we look to confirm second place, starting next week at home to Newcastle, and the boss is determined that the side finish the season strongly.

“We have to. We have a massive game now against Newcastle. We cannot be the best so we have to make sure that we are the best of the rest. And against Newcastle, we have the opportunity to wrap that up.”