Arsenal midfielder Granit Xhaka was left furious with the club’s defence after Thursday night’s 1-1 draw with Slavia Prague in the Europa League.
Arsenal thought they were heading for a quarter-final first-leg victory over Slavia Prague at the Emirates Stadium after Nicolas Pepe scored a late goal in the 86th minute.
But Mikel Arteta’s side blew it in stoppage time when Tomas Holes scored three minutes into added time to secure a an important draw for the Czech team and a potentially pivotal away goal.
The late goal is another huge blow for the Gunners after the disastrous performance in the 3-0 defeat to Liverpool in the Premier League last weekend.
And that is probably why tensions were so high, particularly in the case of midfielder Xhaka, who lost his cool after seeing their opponent find a late equaliser.
As pointed out by Goal’s Charles Watts, Xhaka was angry with his teammates after the final whistle, yelling: “Just clear the f*****g ball away man.”
Speaking after the disappointing draw, Arteta seemed to hint that he agreed with Xhaka, saying his players kept the ball in areas they didn’t need to in the game.
He said: “I don’t think they switched off, I think we made a bad decision, playing the ball into an area where we got trapped and from there, we conceded the corner. Apart from that, I don’t think it is the case.
“What was missing is that when you create big chances in Europe, you have to take them. I think we merited much more than the result that we got.
“When we made the most difficult thing, which was to score the first goal and just wait for the last four or five minutes and manage the game much better than we did.
“We failed to do that and then we gave them the opportunity in the corner and they scored the goal to tie the match and [put us] in a different position. Looking back to what happened on the pitch, it’s not what we expect.”
