Mikel Arteta admitted Thursday’s Europa League draw with Olympiacos is now a “massive game” for his team after Saturday’s frustrating draw at Burnley.
Granit Xhaka’s bizarre error at the end of the first half gave Burnley a draw after Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s first goal, leading to more points lost while Arsenal remain stuck in tenth place.
Arteta – who defended both Xhaka and the tactic of playing from the rear – admitted after the match that it is now “too complicated” for the Gunners to secure European football through the Premier League, putting the focus on their last match of 16 matches in Piraeus this week.
“We are under pressure to represent this club and what that means in any competition we play is that we have to win, regardless of what we are doing in any other competition,” said Arteta.
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“Obviously, we know that Thursday is a big game for us.”
Arsenal commanded the game before Xhaka inexplicably kicked the ball against Chris Wood and went in, but did not recover from the incident until a late run in which they saw a penalty denied, another conceded, but later annulled by VAR, and Dani Ceballos hit the post in downtime.
Although VAR Kevin Friend was undeniably right in saying that Nicolas Pepe’s kick hit Erik Pieters’ shoulder and not his arm when he deflected it into the crossbar, nullifying a penalty and a red card, Arteta was furious that his team did not score . kick for the first handball complaint against Pieters.
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It felt like a ball-by-hand affair when Pepe’s touch hit the Dutchman closely, but Arteta left Turf Moor feeling that the important decisions had gone against him. It remains to be seen how much this can cost your side of the line.
“When you come here fighting with the best teams, you have to win the game,” he said. “We didn’t do it because (we didn’t take advantage) of opportunities, we scored a goal for the opponent and we needed some decisions and we couldn’t make them.”
Although the match ended with Arsenal fighting for a winner, things could have gotten worse with Burnley having several chances in the second half to go ahead, the best of which falling to Wood, who shot Bernd Leno straight after contact with Matej Vydra .