Arsenal took the lead thanks to William Saliba’s 22 minutes. But Sporting responded with two goals from Goncalo Inacio and Paulinho to take the lead. However, Arsenal still struggled to get a draw to bring back the Emirates when Xhaka’s cross smashed Hidemasa Morita and flew into the net.
After the game, coach Arteta said that Arsenal had lost the ball too much and the defense was not playing well.
“When you concede two bad goals like us away in Europe, it’s very difficult to get a positive result.
The game had a lot of different phases because we lost the ball so much at home and gave them a chance to take advantage of the transitions, which they did very well.
In other moments, we had control of the game. We lost a bit of threat today, especially with four players absent in attack.
There were some positives because we showed the resilience to get back into the game, but we need to defend our box better, and need to do that much better next Sunday. .
We’ve played a couple of very emotional matches recently. We made a lot of changes today, and sometimes it takes time to create cohesion. In the first 15 minutes, it was felt that the players needed time to adapt and explode. If we don’t try, it never happens.”
Source: https://bongda24h.vn/europa-league/hoa-sporting-arteta-nhiec-moc-hang-thu-cua-arsenal-506-347104.html