Mikel Arteta:

“Extremely disappointed. But first of all, I think we have to congratulate Brighton for the victory. I think they deserve it. I think they were the better team.

From our side, there were certain basics that you need to accomplish in football, especially in the Premier League, that we were very far from: win the first duel, second ball. That put the game, especially with how direct they were, in a really difficult place for us.

On top of that, when we did regain the ball, especially in our own half, the amount of technical errors that we did, and we didn’t respect any principle of play that you have to get out of that man-to-man situation. So that put us always on the back foot. It was very difficult to control the game.

When we had moments of dominance and control, then we opened them up, but we didn’t finish those actions with the quality that is required to compensate for all the other things that you are doing. At the end of the day, I think they deserve to win the game, and it’s a big lesson for us.”

Notice how Arteta puts emphasis on the duel first. The technical errors were so bad that he has to mention them, but if they hadn’t been so sloppy, I don’t think he would even mention it. It is all about duels.

Mikel Arteta:

“I think they knew. I think we knew how tough it was going to be today, and the first thing that we were discussing was about the first pass: if you don’t get out of that first pass as winners, it will be extremely difficult to dominate the game and to have any probability of winning the game. We knew that. But that’s again credit to them for what they’ve done, because they overcame us and they had another edge than we did. That’s something that, at this level, is extremely important to respect and understand before anything else.

I wish he would have expanded on “the first pass” because it is not just one pass. It is a combination of passes, but you can infer what he means.