Midfielder Aaron Ramsey believes Arsenal’s 4-0 defeat to Liverpool could prove costly in their pursuit for the Premier League title this season.

Ramsey had a very poor game and was removed at half-time for Francis Coquelin. The Welshman had no awareness about the dangers posed by Liverpool’s midfield and was often caught way out of position.

After the game, he fronted up the media and offered the usual platitudes after a bad defeat. “We’re very disappointed with the way we performed but we have to accept it,” Ramsey said, reports Arsenal.com.

“We’re sorry to the fans that came up – it’s not good enough and we have to do something about it. I don’t know [how they can change it], we’ll have to review it and hopefully move on.”

At the very least, Ramsey didn’t try to sugar coat anything and admitted that there were zero positives from the game. Asked if there were any positives, he said: “No I don’t think so.

“We’re going to have to change something if we’re to compete this year. That wasn’t good enough. Liverpool showed what it’s going to have to take to compete for the Premier League and we’re going to have to do something about it if we’re going to do that.”

Nonetheless, we’ve been here before too many times. We lose badly, players come out and apologise and say they need to be better, they don’t get better, then we lose badly again. It’s a vicious cycle.

Players have media responsibilities and have to say something, but verbal apologies only go so far before they start sounding empty. The best way to apologise is to win a big game with a performance people can be proud about.

Ramsey will now go away with Wales to focus on qualifying for the World Cup, so at least he has that distraction. The fans, meanwhile, will be left to mull over the result for two weeks before seeing if the team can put it right.