Arsenal's continuing struggle to find the net this season resulted in another Premier League defeat. Mikel Arteta's side clashed with Tottenham Hotspur and the London derby ended in favor of the host club, 2-0. The Gunners manager said his squad's inability to score is killing them.
The frontline duo of Harry Kane and Son Heung-min won the match for Spurs, again highlighting that Arsenal's stars failed to match the terrific attacking efforts displayed by Jose Mourinho's side. The Gunners' usual top scorers, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette, fell silent in the match and Arteta said the loss was not surprising at all.
The coach explained that the game stats showed his side is doing things the right way but stumbled when it came to finishing the goal.
"We had the chances. We had generated probably more than ever this season, put the ball in the box more than ever... At the end it's a football match and you have to win it, and we lost again today," Goal reported the Arsenal boss as saying.
Arteta likewise acknowledged that his club is not in the good spot right now in the Premier League table, and the only way for the situation to improve is for the team to start scoring again.
The Spaniard pointing to his squad's scoring deficiency in the campaign so far seemed to put the blame too on Aubameyang and Lacazette. The pair impressed last season with their goalscoring performance, which allowed Arsenal to win the FA Cup and continue competing in Europe.
This season, however, is proving to be a struggle for the two strikers as they only managed to clear a total of five goals in all competitions.
Aubameyang, for one, appeared to be a shadow of the prolific goalscorer that he was last season. The Gabon forward scored 22 goals for Arsenal during that term and was awarded a lucrative extension by the North London.
Yet after agreeing to a £300,000 pay per week, Aubameyang found it difficult to play in the same way that he was. The 31-year-old suggested that his dip in form might have been caused by the switch from center to the left flank, although he played a central role in recent games.
According to The Daily Mail, such assertion was supported by Kwaku Mensah, Aubameyang's agent, who claimed that Arteta's attacking approach should be blamed for Arsenal's losing games. Mensah said the manager was not creating chances for the strikers to score and as a result, Aubameyang is playing below par.
The game stats indeed showed that while the Gunners had more possession over the Spurs, they only managed two shots on target. This appeared to be the club's story in the season as their 32 shots make the third-worst team in the competition.
