EPL: Gunners sweating on injuries after Europa League loss

Mikel Arteta has revealed that his team tried for 120 minutes, but it wasn’t enough to progress in the Europa League, as they were beaten by Sporting on penalties.
Mikel Arteta urged his Arsenal side to focus on their 11 remaining “finals” in the Premier League, starting with their home game against Crystal Palace on Sunday, after they were knocked out of the Europa League by Sporting Lisbon.

Arsenal were beaten 5-3 on penalties at the Emirates Stadium after a sensational long-range goal from Pedro Goncalves cancelled out Granit Xhaka’s opener, levelling the tie 3-3 on aggregate in a second-leg clash in which the hosts were second best for long periods.

The manner of the defeat capped a bitterly frustrating night for Arsenal, who also lost Takehiro Tomiyasu and William Saliba to first-half injuries, with the former leaving the Emirates Stadium on crutches with what Arteta described as a “serious” issue.

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“Huge blow,” Arteta said of the result afterwards. “We really wanted to go through and fight in the competition and go for it and today we tried for 120 mins and penalties and it wasn’t enough.

“First of all, congratulations to Sporting Lisbon for going through. Looking at ourselves, the game started difficult, we lost Tomi early in the game, then we lost Saliba and that left us with really difficult game management because we only had that window to make subs and a few players could not play the 90 minutes.

“But still, we didn’t find our rhythm and our flow and we allowed too many spaces and didn’t win enough duels, and then we gave the ball away many, many times, sometimes time after time.

“Then, the last 20 minutes, we got the flow, the momentum and created three big chances, but we didn’t score.”