Martin Odegaard brands Arsenal’s second-half capitulation against Bournemouth ‘not acceptable’ – as Mikel Arteta urges his players to use the ‘rage’ from the defeat in crunch PSG clash

A frustrated Martin Odegaard admitted Arsenal were ‘too sloppy’ and unacceptable in their defeat to Bournemouth on Saturday.

Dean Huijsen and Evanilson both struck from second-half set-pieces to cancel out Declan Rice’s goal and hurt the Gunners ahead of their Champions League semi-final second leg against Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday, where they face a 1-0 deficit from the first leg.

The north London club have now dropped 21 points from a winning position in the league this season and risk losing their second-place spot with a number of teams chasing them down, including Manchester City and Newcastle. 

Odegaard said: ‘Massive disappointment. I think we started the game pretty well. We got the goal and felt like we controlled pretty much everything, but they score and we lose control of the game.

‘We never find the rhythm after that, it is too chaotic and too sloppy from us. The second half is not acceptable.

‘We have to move on as we have a massive game coming up. We have to get ready for that and analyse this game as well.

‘This is what we want — we want to compete in every competition. We wanted to come here and do a good game and win, but that wasn’t the case.’

Mikel Arteta said the Gunners still have work to do to secure a top-five spot for Champions League qualification next season.

‘Well we have a lot to do, yes, because mathematically we are not qualified, we haven’t had the right to finish second yet so we still have a lot to do,’ he said.

On Wednesday’s crunch clash against PSG, he added: ‘It created a lot of anger, frustration, rage, disappointment. Let’s use all of that on Wednesday. That’s what we have to do.’