Noni Madueke admitted Arsenal “weren’t clinical enough” after a draw away to Nottingham Forest, as the winger urged the leaders to regroup quickly ahead of a Champions League trip to Inter Milan.
Arsenal remain seven points clear at the top of the Premier League and are now 11 matches unbeaten in all competitions, with seven of those games coming in the league but there is still a sense of an opportunity missed.
“It’s disappointing to draw for sure,” Madueke said.
“We wanted to win the game, we didn’t achieve that. Disappointing in that sense, but it’s a point we take on the road and we regroup. We’ve got an important clash versus Inter in the Champions League, which we’ll go into trying to win.
“There is a long way to go. We know that we’ve been very consistent and we’ll continue to do so.”
Arsenal created four big chances at the City Ground while not allowing a single shot on target, but the match still ended 0-0, their second consecutive goalless draw in the league for the first time since 2012-13.
“We weren’t clinical enough in front of goal,” Madueke added. “I think they didn’t have a chance really at all, they didn’t really do anything to our goal. We weren’t clinical and we could have won the game, but like I said, we take a point and we move on.
Mikel Arteta added that Arsenal had generated enough to win and described the result as a missed opportunity.
“We came here to win the game, that’s clear, and we needed the opportunities that we had,” he said at full-time.
“We haven’t managed that, so the word is disappointment. We haven’t conceded anything, any single shot again and generated four massive chances with Martinelli with an open goal, with Declan Rice, Merino and then Bukayo Saka’s header with an unbelievable save, and on top of that, a very clear penalty as well that has not been given.
“So after that, it’s pretty difficult for us because it’s a team that is very well organised and very difficult to generate a lot of momentum throughout the game, so it’s disappointing.”
Arteta also pointed to the need to take chances against opponents who defend deep. “You need [to take chances], especially to open them up, especially the way that they played,” he added.
“We tried in many ways, we made changes, we tried to have more people in the last line, to have very creative players in and around the box. When you get into those moments, you have to make it happen if you want to win and we didn’t manage to get it done.”
The Forest game was Arsenal’s third away match in a run of four in 10 days, coming after the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg at Chelsea last Wednesday, the FA Cup game at Portsmouth and before the Champions League match at Inter on Tuesday.
“At the end, it’s another little step and the schedule is very, very demanding,” Arteta said. “We came two and a half days ago to play against Chelsea in the semi-final, they both made a huge effort. We have a game in three days against Inter Milan, then Man United, so yeah, reflect today and tomorrow we go again.”
“We’re in four competitions, so we literally play, recover, play, recover, play. So it’s a lot of games, but that’s the beauty of playing in England.”