‘I’m extremely sad’ – Mikel Arteta hails Man City on winning title as he takes responsibility for Arsenal’s collapse
Mikel Arteta took responsibility for Arsenal’s collapse as he congratulated Manchester City on winning the Premier League title.
The Gunners were the team to beat this season after topping the table for 248 days.
Arteta’s side failed in their quest to win the Premier League (/caption)
But they started to lose points from the beginning of April, which allowed the Citizens to overtake them.
And after last week’s loss to Brighton, Arteta knew his side could not afford to lose to Nottingham Forest if they wanted to stay with a slim chance of winning the club’s first championship since 2004.
But they were second at the City Ground as they were beaten 1-0.
The result confirmed City’s third consecutive title – their fifth in the past six years.
The Gunners have suffered back-to-back defeats in the top flight (/caption)
And Arteta congratulated his former employers on their triumph, as he reflected on the “painful” experience of missing out.
Speaking to Sky Sports, he said: “First of all congratulations to City on winning the league, but obviously it’s a really sad day for us after everything we’ve done this season. .
“But now we have to face reality, today we gave away a goal and we weren’t good enough to break them.
“We could play here for three hours and I have this feeling that we didn’t have enough (to score).
Arteta couldn’t inspire the Gunners to victory at the City Ground (/caption)
“It’s my responsibility and I assume it. When it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful, when it’s not, it’s sport.
“The number of goals we’ve given to opponents recently has cost us, but we can’t blame anyone.
“We shouldn’t be making excuses and trying to blame someone. We should have been better as a team.
“We should have been better as a team and over the past few weeks we have failed, that’s for sure.”
Arteta continued: “It’s football. It’s a very sad day, we’ve been working for 11 months towards this goal and we’ve been on top for so many days.
“We competed but we didn’t have enough. Now we have to heal. It is very painful. I am extremely sad.
“I have to find a way to lift the players and we have a tough week ahead of us.
“We have a huge responsibility, we are playing in front of our fans (against Wolves) who have been amazing all season, and they deserve a really good game.”
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