A year ago
The Premier League title challenge of his team, the Arsenal, was derailed at specific times and during specific games, according to manager Mikel Arteta.
Manchester City will finish first, and the north Londoners' hopes of winning their first league title since 2004 were dashed by the Gunners' hapless 1-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest on Saturday evening.
Arsenal failed to win the English championship after spending a record 248 days at the top of the standings, in large part because of their performance over the season's closing months.
Arteta was questioned about the "key moments" that led to Arsenal losing the title fight following Saturday's defeat at the City Ground.
"It started with what happened at Anfield in the 90th minute," he remarked, alluding to Arsenal's 2-2 draw with Liverpool in April despite being two goals ahead.
"If you score [Bukayo Saka's penalty] at West Ham to make it 3-1, everything changes. We have given up many goals. In those games, we've handed up 16 goals. That is a lot. That cannot be maintained.
"There are no margins in this league, so you have to be excellent in every aspect. With that team, you have no margins. We lost the league because we padded those margins too much.
Arteta responded, "My responsibility," when asked why Arsenal had given up so many more goals since April. Because we haven't done that, I am ultimately accountable for the team scoring many more goals than the opposition.
A back injury sustained by starting center-back William Saliba during their Europa League exit to Sporting CP was also brought up to Arteta as a contributing cause in their failure.
Arteta concurred, "Yeah, we can look at that." However, there are still certain things we could have done better.
Mikel Arteta identifies "key moments" when Arsenal's title defense broke down.
It was also put to Arteta that a back injury sustained by starting centre-back William Saliba during their Europa League exit to Sporting CP was a factor in their collapse.
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