Arsenal had a disappointing trip to Molineux as Wolverhampton Wanderers beat them 2-1 on Tuesday night. A turning point in the game was the red card given to central defender David Luiz and Mikel Arteta told Football London that he just didn’t see any contact in the tackle.
The North London club have been in great form in the league and it looked like they were going to continue that when they took the lead. But that was not to be the case as Wolves hit back with a penalty and then later a screamer from Joao Moutinho.
Having started the game brightly, the boss himself said that his team should have been up by three or four goals.
They paid the price for not taking/optimizing their chances and that gave the hosts a chance to get back into the game.
To make it harder for the North Londoners, Bernd Leno was also sent off for handling the ball outside the penalty area. This forced them to play the last part of the game with only nine men, making it even harder to try and score an equaliser.
And when he was asked about the first red card, this is what the Spaniard had to say to Football London:
“Well first of all I’m extremely proud of our team. The way we played, the way we dominated the first half.
We should have been three or four nil up and we didn’t do that, and we put ourselves in a really difficult position after conceding the goal and going a man down.
“If you want to talk about the decision, I’ve just seen the replay ten times in five different angles, and I cannot see any contact. I would like to see if VAR has different angles.”
Despite the defeat, there are a lot of positives to be taken by the Gunners. The first being that in the first half, they played with the kind of fluidity and zip that Arteta has always wanted.
They kept creating chances and could easily have scored more than one goal.
The other major positive was that the team didn’t implode even after going down to nine men. They kept fighting and did not concede another goal and were able to come up with some attacks of their own.
With this loss, the unbeaten run that Arsenal had been on in the Premier League comes to an end. They will have a chance to rectify this when they travel to Aston Villa on Saturday. A win there can once again spark hopes of somehow reaching the European qualification slots.