LONDON: After stumbling to a 0-1 defeat at the hands of Leicester City in the Premier League, Arsenal coach Mikel Arteta admitted that fatigue had a role to play in the defeat of his side.
Arsenal and Leicester City were even at 0-0 till the 80th minute of the match. At that time, Jamie Vardy scored the match-winning goal for Leicester City, giving them a 1-0 win.
"I think fatigue had a say there as well. We didn't look as sharp on the ball. We didn't have much purpose on the ball. David gave us something different when we wanted to do something with the low blocks," Goal.com quoted Arteta as saying.
"Credit to them, they are really organised and it's difficult to create chances. We created one with Hector Bellerin and we didn't convert. It's an aspect we have to improve on," he added.
Arteta also said he was pleased to see how his side performed in the first half. However, the coach said the side was hampered by the lack of continuity.
"To be fair I was really pleased with the first half. The way we pressed and the aggression we showed. We were effective with that and restricted them to nothing. We scored the goal on the set-piece, which I don't know how it got disallowed. We needed to be patient and not to make any errors," Arteta said.
"We made the decision when there is no pressure on the ball to try and attack that space and they scored a good goal. We didn't manage to have enough continuity in our play, we didn't put the ball as often as we could in the box. It's a very harsh result for us considering what happened in the game," he added.
Arsenal is currently at the 10th position in the Premier League 2020-21 standings with 9 points from six games.
The Gunners will next take on Manchester United in the Premier League on Sunday, November 1.