Mikel Arteta, the manager of Arsenal, has taken responsibility for the team's poor play toward the end of the current campaign.
After exceeding expectations for the bulk of the season, Arsenal relinquished their hold on the Premier League crown with just two victories in their final eight games, giving the trophy to Manchester City following a 1-0 loss to Nottingham Forest.
Arteta claimed he would be reviewing his own play throughout the run-up to Sunday's season finale against Wolves, and he pushed his players to do the same.
First and foremost, Arteta said, "[we need to be] critical with ourselves, starting with me. "My responsibility is to maximize the potential of the 24 players we have on hand, but I haven't been able to achieve that.
"We haven't been able to develop the players who still have a lot of potential. There are various explanations. Whether it's because to injury, lack of playing time, or because I haven't had the chance or been able to play them enough.Because it's our responsibility to increase such margins, we must search for them.
"We are thinking about [how to improve]," Arteta continued. “There have been many excellent things accomplished by the club, the first team staff, and the players, but in this league they fall short.”
“In order to give the players the best opportunity to succeed and get the most out of them for ten and a half months in an extremely exciting season, we must examine what the players and the club will require for the upcoming campaign. We need to revisit that approach in order to succeed again.”
After a difficult few weeks, Arteta is eager to give the supporters something to cheer about as Arsenal looks to avoid finishing the season on a run of three straight losses.
"Now is about finishing the season in style and providing a great performance and a victory in front of our people," the boss continued. "Show our gratitude and receive a lot of the incredible energy that they have given us throughout the season and start to build for the next season.
"We have to wrap it up in the best possible way, it’s been some journey full of emotions and something to look forward to which at the end we haven’t achieved. Looking with a bit of perspective, there are a lot of things not only on the field that happened at the club that deserves a lot of credit for a lot of people."
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