Team captain Martin Odegaard admitted there is “no hope” for Arsenal in the Premier League title race after Sunday’s 3-0 defeat at Brighton dealt a potentially fatal blow to their competition.
Second-half goals from Julio Nciso, Deniz Undav and Pervis Estupinan gave the visitors a deserved victory at the Emirates Stadium as the Gunners struggled to respond to Manchester City’s win at Everton earlier in the day.
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The result leaves City four points behind them with a game in hand. Pep Guardiola’s side will be champions if Arsenal lose at Nottingham Forest on Saturday evening, and Odegaard told Sky Sports: “I think it’s going to be very difficult now, to be honest. It’s hard to take.
“It’s not a good feeling at the moment. The way we played, especially in the second half, I don’t know what happened, to be honest. A big, big disappointment, and it seems like there’s no hope. [in the title race] Now.”
Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta believed his side had surrendered after going 0-0 at the break and apologized to supporters, thousands of whom left the ground long before the final whistle.
“A week [ago]I felt proud [after beating Newcastle United] And today we have to apologize because our performance in the second half was not acceptable,” Arteta said. “We knew the way they played, they made the game really competitive. I think there were 30 fouls in the game.
“It’s very difficult to get any long sequence of play, set in the final third. They had a lot of problems too; they gave a lot of the ball in their own half, and we could have really capitalized in the first half. Six occasions and we didn’t.
“Then we conceded a goal when they were really directly behind and the team had no response from there. Obviously when you concede the silly goal, the second one, the team collapsed and the team had no answer.”
Arteta refused to give up the title, but warned his players that changes will be made this summer as they are still capable of producing subpar performances.
“Mathematically it’s still possible and that’s football,” he added. “But it’s impossible to think about it today. We have to digest the result first, the performance we had in the second half, understand why and react very differently in the next game.
“You have to have a lot of good things, incredible things to be second like we’ve done for 10 months, but if the team is able to show that face, there are things that need to be addressed.”