Mikel Arteta laments Arsenal’s defeat at Manchester United

Arsenal saw their perfect record come to an abrupt end at the hands of Manchester United, with Mikel Arteta lamenting the mistakes that cost his side the game.

There was a distinct sense of optimism heading into a notoriously tricky fixture on Sunday afternoon. In stark contrast to last season, the Gunners were flying and had won all five of their previous matches.

However, coming to Old Trafford was going to be the biggest test for this young team, and unfortunately, after dominating the game, Arsenal returned to north London with their tails between their legs.

Mikel Arteta laments Arsenal’s defeat at Manchester United

The Gunners were the better side, having more shots on goal and dominating possession (60.5%), but were undone twice by devastating United transitions. Manager Mikel Arteta spoke with arsenal.com post-match and said that the game’s result should have been different.

"“We have to learn from that,” Arteta said.“We lacked the discipline that is necessary in certain areas of the pitch against these world-class players to prevent certain spaces, because overall when you look at the performance and the way we played, obviously the result should’ve been very, very different.”"

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The defeat is brutal to swallow for Arsenal as VAR again caused controversy after ruling out Gabriel Martinelli’s opener as Martin Odegaard was adjudged to have fouled Christian Eriksen, to which United then scored against the run of play 11 minutes later.

Arteta said that the game was there for the taking at half-time, but his team conceded two goals from mistakes, which disappointed him.

"“I thought the game was more for the taking at half-time, that’s what I said to the boys,” Arteta said.“If we do what we have to do, we’re going to win the game. We started to do it and we were dominant, we scored one goal, and we created chance after chance. But in the best moment of the game, we conceded a goal, that is our own mistake.”"

While the result is not what the club wanted, they are still top of the league after six games which any supporter would have taken at the start of the year. Up next, Arsenal kick off their Europa League campaign away to FC Zurich on Thursday.