Mikel Arteta after Crystal Palace draw: ‘We weren’t at our best’ | OneFootball

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta says Arsenal “weren’t at our best” after Crystal Palace scored a late equaliser to draw 2-2.

Jakub Kiwior had opened the scoring for Arsenal after three minutes with a header from Martin Odegaard’s free kick, before Eberechi Eze’s superb volley levelled the match midway through the first half. Leandro Trossard restored the Gunners’ lead just before half-time before substitute Jean-Philippe Mateta capitalised on a William Saliba error to lob David Raya and secure Oliver Glasner’s side a point.

The draw levels Arsenal 12 points behind Premier League leaders Liverpool, who now just need a point to secure their 20th English league title.

When asked to comment on Arsenal’s 13th draw of the campaign, Arteta believes his side needed to win more of those games:

“We haven’t been able to see the games off for many reasons,” Arteta said. “The margins have been too small. Sometimes that’s when I credit to the opposition, it’s true that we played five times with ten men.

“There are a lot of factors, but obviously it’s something that we’ve done much better in the past, especially when we’ve been ahead in games, and today, without really much happening, especially in the second half, we have to be able to see the game off.

“You have to win a certain amount of games, and at some points, we have only lost three games, two of them with ten men, so we have to win many more.”

With a Champions League semi-final against French Champions PSG next week, Arteta refused to get drawn into the narrative that his side’s focus had switched to Europe.

“Hopefully not, but we discussed that before each week, and it wasn’t there. Today we had still six days to prepare the match and I don’t want to use that. Obviously, we have missed a lot of players, a lot of players that haven’t trained at all, that weren’t able to do today, so we’ve been very short.

“But as well, credit to Palace, they are very well organised, they are a really good side and they made it difficult for us and the reality as well that today we weren’t at our best.”