Mikel Arteta has said Arsenal must stop trying to score “the perfect goal” after Saturday’s narrow 1-0 win over Hull City.
The Gunners struggled to break down their opponents in a game short on clear chances before captain Martin Ødegaard netted a 72nd-minute winner from close range.
Arsenal moved six points clear at the top of the Premier League after equalling their best-ever start to a season — nine wins from 10 games — and were later given more good news thanks to Manchester City‘s defeat to Nottingham Forest. But Arteta is eyeing further improvement after the international break having seen his team win eight matches across all competitions by a single-goal margin so far this season.
“[We need to] be more efficient,” he said. “We are one against one against the keeper. That’s happened twice today. There is a penalty there, there is another situation inside the box where the ball is bouncing. So many shots that have been deflected, blocked. We need to find ways to be more efficient, sometimes even more pragmatic.
“Sometimes my feeling is that we are trying to score a perfect goal against these low blocks. We need to be much more chaotic than that, and that’s it. And open, I think, the scoreline much earlier because obviously that’s going to change the course of the game.
“We had enough chances to make the scoreline much bigger. We weren’t efficient enough to do that. And then we have to rely on generating volume, generating a lot of situations in and around the box, insisting, insisting and insisting until we are able to break them down. And this is exactly how we won the game.”
Arteta also admitted he was left baffled by the VAR’s decision not to award the Gunners a first-half penalty for a challenge on Kai Havertz.
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Hull defender Nobel Mendy pulled Havertz’s shirt in the box but he was in an offside position. Referee Farai Hallam was sent to the monitor and agreed Havertz had been fouled but then awarded Hull a free-kick.
The law states that a player hasn’t committed an offside offence until he challenges an opponent for the ball, but there are past incidents where a penalty has been given and also not given for similar situations.
“I haven’t watched it back and I didn’t watch it back so I don’t have to lie to you guys,” Arteta said. “I was surprised because when they sent the referee to the monitor, Benji [analyst Ben Chadwick] was telling me it’s a clear penalty.
“So I heard now that they decided not to because of the starting position of Kai that he was offside. I don’t know what the interpretation is. I’m sure they will make that clear to understand it.”
