Piers Morgan has slammed Arsenal after their 2-1 defeat against Fulham on New Years’ Ever and called their performance “inexplicably dreadful performance”.
Arsenal’s season has taken a turn for the worse with the Gunners winning just once in their last five games. Defeats against West Ham and Fulham in their last two games have received criticism for their poor finishing, weak mentality and physicality issues.
Morgan claimed Arsenal are missing former player Granit Xhaka and believes Arsenal’s hopes of winning the Premier League title are already over.
He wrote on social media:
“Arsenal are being bullied by teams who’ve realised our midfield/attack is very skillful, but physically weak.
“We need more muscle. I miss Xhaka. Arsenal look a pale imitation of last year’s swaggering team. Depressing to watch.
“Another inexplicably dreadful performance. You can’t lose to Aston Villa, West Ham and Fulham in the space of 3 weeks and expect to win the Premier League. It’s over before we even get to 2024.
“Unfortunately, it’s the mentality of our players in the past 3 weeks which has made it clear we’re not ready to win the League.
“Champions don’t get so comprehensively outplayed in every department by West Ham and Fulham.” And Arteta admitted after the match that it was Arsenal’s “worst game of the season”, warning his players that they will be “nowhere near” the title if they continue to play like that.”
Mikel Arteta admitted that his team’s form is suffering and called their defeat against Fulham the worst performance of the season.
He told BBC Sport: “Today was our worst game of the season. The pace, the purpose we have in attack, defensively we were second best, we could not dominate and had issues because of that.
“We didn’t do enough with that [possession] – not enough purpose speed or threat. We were sloppy with the ball. It wasn’t good enough. We didn’t deserve to win. When you have opportunities to go top of league on 31 December and now end up with really bad feeling that is football.
“The lines are really thin. If we play like we played in the other 19 games we will be up there [in the league at the end of the season]. If we play like today we will be nowhere near. Today was a really difficult day to swallow.”
Just before Christmas, Arsenal were sitting top of the league but recent results have completely turned around the situation. They are now fourth behind Liverpoo, Aston Villa and Manchester City.