Mikel Arteta insisted that their draw against Crystal Palace was disappointing but fair as his side lacked the cutting edge and quality in the final third. The draw ended Arsenal’s four match winning run in all competition and the manager spoke about the perfomance, injuries to key players and the long drawn out saga of Mesut Ozil’s transfer away from the club.
Mikel Arteta said ”I am disappointed because we wanted to win the game. But I think a draw is a fair result, because we lacked some freshness and some quality in the final third to win this match. Well I don’t know how close he’s been before (Ozil on leaving Arsenal). There are some conversations going with Edu and the club at the moment, but nothing concrete yet. We don’t know. We’ll probably know more tomorrow after testing him (Tierney) and having the evolution of the injury and how long he’s gonna be out for. Certainly it was a big disappointment just on the day of the match to lose him. Hopefully he can be with us very quickly. Well, it is a challenge when you created a game plan for the day and just a few hours before the game he has to pull out. But that’s why we have other players to do it and they have to step in. Kieran’s progression in the last few months has been incredible and now it’s for another player to step in and do that he does.”
