Arteta admits disappointment over Arsenal’s result against Olympiakos

Mikel Arteta admitted to being disappointed with Arsenal’s result against Olympiakos, despite the Gunners claiming a 1-0 win in Greece. 

Alexandre Lacazette’s late goal gave the London club a 1-0 win at the Karaiskakis Stadium, putting them in a good position ahead of the return leg.

However, despite saying it was a “really good result”, Arteta also said he felt his side could have done more in the game to make securing their progression to the round of 16 that little bit simpler.

He told BT Sport: “To win away in Europe is very difficult, to come to a ground like this and get the result we got, it’s credit to the lads.

“I think we could have put the tie in a much better position, it is still good, but we had clear chances for top players that we expect to put the ball in the net.”

Lacazette was guilty of missing a number of chances before hitting the winner, while Gabriel Martinelli also failed to make the most of his best opportunity just before the half time break.

Arteta continued: “We suffered in the first ten minutes, I think we gave a lot of simple balls away when we had the chance to open them up and create the overloads and the situations to run, we gave the ball away so we could not generate any continuity in our play.”

Having seen Bernd Leno called into action on a number of occasions in the first half, the London club were much better after the restart and looked much stronger at the back, while also threatening in attack.

Arteta was pleased with that, adding: “I think that we started to have more control of the game and create the situations that we wanted.

“We missed a couple of good opportunities and in the second half on the set pieces we controlled the game much better defensively, we controlled the game in the opponents half much better and we had the chances to score more.”

On the back of their manager’s first win in European football in his very first game on that stage, Arsenal will welcome the Athens-based club to the Emirates next Thursday as they look to finish the job and qualify for the next round of the Europa League.