Arsenal were made to pay for their missed chances in their 2-0 defeat to West Ham (Shutterstock)
Owen Hargreaves believes Arsenal need to target a new striker and a new left-back following their 2-0 defeat at home to West Ham on Thursday evening.
Mikel Arteta’s side suffered a major blow in the Premier League title race as goals in each half from Tomas Soucek and Konstantinos Mavropanos sealed the win for West Ham at the Emirates Stadium.
Arsenal dominated the majority of the game and had 77 touches inside West Ham’s penalty area – the most on record in a Premier League match for a team who failed to score since 2008 – but failed to find a way through.
Gabriel Jesus missed Arsenal’s best chance in the second half as his close-range header was off target and former Manchester United midfielder Hargreaves believes Arteta now needs to recruit a striker with more physical presence to unlock defensive opponents.
‘Every guy on that list is a beautiful football player,’ Hargreaves told Premier League Productions when asked about Arsenal’s attacking options.
‘The difference between, you know, the goalcorers sometimes aren’t really great football players, you couldn’t say Haaland’s technically a brilliant football player but he’s a brilliant finisher.
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‘And I think Arsenal they’ve got all these brilliant football players, all they need is somebody just put the ball in the back in the back of the net.
‘Be in between the lines, that that last chance from Jesus, and I love him, he has to score, he just has to score. I just think he just has to head it back back the other way and I think it’s a pretty easy finish for a guy like Haaland or Lewandowski.
‘I just think when Arteta can look at that game, 74 per cent possession, 30 shots, they did more than enough to get something from the game.
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‘But looking at that, I think you need a different option now, just a bigger guy that when a team sits in you can cross in and he can go and head it. Their biggest chances came from headers, you can’t have everybody that’s 5’9″, 5’10”.
‘Sometimes you need a focal point, they missed Havertz, he would’ve been in there in the box getting on the end of some of those headers.
‘I actually thought Declan [Rice] played really well. He’s barely put a foot wrong in an Arsenal shirt, if anything they need more people like Declan with that mentality to keep pushing.
‘I feel like they’ve got a lot of brilliant football players, but they probably just need another one or two, a centre-forward and a left-back, they could do with a couple in that Declan mould.’
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