Mikel Arteta felt that our performance during our 1-0 defeat at Liverpool didn’t yield the result that we merited.
Dominik Szoboszlai produced a rabbit out of the hat with an excellent 30-yard free-kick to swing the result the Reds’ way, despite us enjoying the better of the game in the opening hour and forcing Allison into a couple of decent stops.
At that point, Mikel was thinking that the game would be decided by something noteworthy, but unfortunately the home side produced the defining moment as we tasted a league defeat on the road for the first time since November.
“We're disappointed with the result, I think we deserved more,” he reflected. “I think the team showed a lot of good things throughout the game, a lot of dominance in a place where that is very, very difficult to do. I think we elevated the game to standards that were really high.
“They did it for a period of 15-20 minutes in the second half and then there were no margins so the game was going to be decided whether with an individual error that didn't happen, or with a magic moment.
“Unfortunately they delivered through Szoboszlai taking an incredible free kick that gave them the game.”
[Read more
Every word from Arteta's post-Liverpool presser](https://www.arsenal.com/news/every-word-artetas-post-liverpool-presser-3?utm_source=arsenaldotcom&utm_medium=embedded-article&utm_campaign=news)
A key moment in the game came just four minutes in when William Saliba was forced off injured, thrusting Cristhian Mosquera into the fray, having only made his Gunners debut as a late replacement against Leeds United last week.
Up against one of the best attacks in the division, the Spaniard was superb alongside Gabriel in our defence, and the boss was keen to single out the 21-year-old as well as give some credit to his teammates for building an environment that allows new faces to slip into our side seamlessly when needed.
“To play your first game at Anfield when you've been thrown on after an injury to Saliba is very, very difficult, so it was phenomenal,” Mikel assessed.
“I think you have to take that honesty and that personality as well to deliver that, and as we said, with the help of everything, I think he had a really good game.”
The international break is now upon us, with us with six points to our name, six goals scored and just one brilliant effort hitting the back of our net.
Mikel feels that is a pretty good platform to build on heading into a mixture of league and European action as summer turns to autumn, and he hopes that we can get some players back fit again sooner rather than later and our luck in that department to change to allow us to hit our maximum.
Analysing our start, he said: “There’s a lot of positives and I think today the result should have been different, very different again. Unfortunately we’ve had a lot of injuries, so hopefully after the break we're going to be in a better place.
“The team is giving, I think, very, very quality signs, so we need to keep building on that.”
Copyright 2025 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.