Viktor Gyokeres suggested a dry Emirates pitch was partly in charge for Arsenal’s disappointing 2-1 defeat to Bournemouth on Sunday.
Gyokeres pulled the Gunners level in the primary half from the spot after Junior Kroupi had given the Cherries the lead after 17 minutes.
But Mikel Arteta’s side were outplayed after the break and were ultimately punished when Alex Scott rounded off an excellent Bournemouth move with a composed finish past David Raya.
It was one other poor display going forward from the Gunners, who managed just three shots on course throughout all the encounter.
And Swedish striker Gyokeres, who fired wide with an ideal opportunity late on, suggested that an absence of moisture within the surface hampered his side’s efforts.
‘We had some probabilities ultimately,’ he told BBC Sport post-match. ‘The pitch was a bit dry there to be honest in order that didn’t help.’
‘But like I said all of us must do higher and take our probabilities.’
On the character of the defeat, Arsenal’s third of their last 4 matches, Gyokeres added: ‘In fact it hurts. Luckily now we have a very good game again on Wednesday to play and one other one on the weekend. We have now rather a lot to look ahead to.
‘We go into every game with the mindset we wish to win the sport and play at our greatest.
‘We all the time have that belief. We all the time wish to win the games. We desired to win this game. We played against good opposition they usually won today.
‘They’re good on the counter-attacks. They’ve good players and did some good combos. But we’d like to do higher.’
Meanwhile, Arteta said his side got nowhere near their usual levels, but pushed back on the notion that a jam-packed season was starting to catch up together with his side.
‘That is just too simplistic to analyse the sport, we had some good moments, we were very inefficient once we broke the press,’ he told BBC Match of the Day.
‘We needed to capitalise on those moments. We had poor defending situations after which it’s game on. Today there have been some actions which are very removed from the extent that now we have shown and that shocks the system.
‘We ask rather a lot from our crowd and today we didn’t reply to those standards and now we have to apologise, take it on the chin and move on.’
Arsenal are back in motion in midweek for his or her Champions League quarter-final second leg clash with Sporting CP before an enormous trip to face Manchester City on the Etihad Stadium next weekend.
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