Despite the 1-0 defeat against Everton, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta remains optimistic and believes that now is the time to show even more support and love to the players.

Speaking to the media after Arsenal’s second defeat of the season, Mikel Arteta was pleased with the efforts of his players despite missing chances, and is looking to put things right in the upcoming home games against Brentford and Manchester City.

“Now is a time to love the players more than the day before and the month before, because they fully deserve it. We will be next to them and prepare for Saturday”, Arteta said.

Although the loss was a disappointment, Arteta sees it as a learning opportunity for the team.

He was frustrated with the amount of set pieces that were conceded and wants to work on improving the team’s ability to defend against these types of plays.

He also highlighted the need for improvement in the team’s emotional management during the final minutes of the game.

“The reality is that we should have done more to win the game,” he added. “We put ourselves in many situations and we had to defend so many set pieces, and against this team it is a very difficult thing to do.

“Then in terms of our possession, we opened them up in many, many situations and we got into the final third in great positions and we didn’t finish well enough.

“They work on [set pieces] every single day and are really good at it. We have experience with Burnley in that type of situation and we have to prevent that happening, and we have to do the basics in defending really well against this team and we came up short in that.

“We still had a lot of time to react to that and we generated some situations but especially in the last 15 minutes, emotionally we didn’t manage the game well enough. We conceded too many free-kicks that stopped the game every 30-40 seconds and we couldn’t get back into the game.

“In the end, it is about the last 20 minutes and what do you do? There I think we lacked something to win like we won a lot of games this season, but we’ll work on that.”

Despite the loss, Arteta remains positive and is focused on getting the team back on track.

He is confident in the abilities of the players and believes that with the right preparation and focus, they will be able to bounce back and achieve a positive outcome in their next game.