After a shocking loss against Everton, Mikel Arteta tells his players that he “loves” them

Mikel Arteta claims that after a dismal 1-0 loss to Everton on Saturday, he still loves his Arsenal teammates much more than before.

The Toffees’ team seemed revitalized under new manager Sean Dyche, while the Gunners dropped just their second Premier League game of the year.

At a boisterous Goodison Park, a header from James Tarkowski was enough to give the home club a well-deserved victory as the league leaders battled to break down the team that came into the weekend ranked 19th in the standings.

The gap between Arsenal and Manchester City in the fight for the championship after 20 games is still five points, with Pep Guardiola’s team scheduled to travel to Tottenham on Sunday.

After the game, Arteta conceded that it was one of Arsenal’s poorest performances of the year thus far and provided a long list of reasons why his team struggled to control the game.

‘We had loads of the ball but we lacked that purpose and quality in the final third, we generated many chances,’ the manager told BT Sport.

‘But then we conceded and they slowed the game down and we struggled. They do this to every team that is their strength with the height, the physicality is their strength, if you want to control the game against them you have to control this.

‘We did not do that today. We needed more composure and to control emotionally the game better.’

At the press conference following the game, he added: ‘The performance doesn’t reflect what we’ve been doing especially in two phases – one, when they were really direct and we struggled to control that type of game and get back to the game that we wanted to play.

‘And then with the amount of open situations that we generated in the final third that has to finish with goals and clear cut chances more than we’ve done today.

‘In the last 10 or 15 minutes, particularly after we made the changes, we started to give away a lot of unnecessary free kicks and a lot of rash decisions which is exactly what they want.’

Despite everything, Arteta avoided criticizing his players directly and emphasized that their title defense would inevitably encounter obstacles.

‘Today I love them much better than the week before or a month ago. It is easy to be next to someone when they are winning well. I am still so proud of all of these players, they deserve it.

‘This is not going to be a rose pathway. This is going to be tricky and we will have to dig in and play much better than we did today.’

Arteta will be aiming to get back to winning ways in their next game when they host Brentford next Saturday.