**Mikel Arteta has backed his Arsenal players to bounce back from their “painful” defeat to Aston Villa.**
Arteta’s side fell to just their second defeat in the Premier League this season when [Emi Buendia scored in the last minute to secure a 2-1 win for Villa](https://hayters.com/aston-villa-go-three-points-behind-arsenal/).
Leandro Trossard had earlier equalised following Matty Cash’s opener, but Buendia’s goal sees Villa move just three points behind Arteta’s league leaders.
“Yes but every week is going to be like this,” Arteta told TNT Sports when asked whether it was a missed opportunity.
“We are 18 games unbeaten and still the margins are so small. This is what we have to do. We have to focus on ourselves and the individual standards which certainly, today, we didn’t raise to that level.
“The effort was absolutely there and we’ll use that pain to go again, that’s football.
“The consistency levels we’ve showed with everything that’s happened to us has been incredible so I have no arguments to think otherwise (that they won’t respond).”
Arteta was critical of his Arsenal players in the defeat, particularly their inability to keep the ball well enough.
“You are always on the edge when you don’t manage the ball when you regain it and we didn’t do that very well in the first half,” he said.
“In the second half, we started really well, scored a goal, we were very dominant but then we had periods again where the same issue appeared and then we didn’t have the dominance. We allowed open spaces, we gave two balls away ourselves to the opponent that could have cost us the game before the goal.
“We had the chance when Declan puts the ball across for Noni and Viktor, we don’t score. Goal-kick long, second ball, clear the ball, individual action, a lot of chaos inside the box and you end up losing it so it is painful.”