MIKEL ARTETA called on Arsenal players to rally around “gutted” captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
The Gunners boss praised captain Aubameyang for fronting up after his last-gasp miss against Olympiacos on Thursday dumped Arsenal out of the Europa League.
The Gabon striker seemed to have put his side through with a spectacular equaliser in extra time and Arteta said: “He was gutted.
“Obviously he scored a wonder goal that put us through in the competition and the last kick of the game he had the best chance of the game and he felt very responsible about it.
“We’ll try to be right behind him. He’s been phenomenal all season for us and now the players have to support him, we have to support him.
“His reaction as well after the game — to face the media and the way he talked and everything — it was a very mature reaction from him.
“We trained Saturday. We were all very down, frustrated, disappointed.
“The first message to them was I am right behind them, thank you for the effort they put into the game, for the attitude and personality they played with and the way they reacted after we conceded a goal.
“They tried, tried and tried again. They completely deserved to win but there are aspects of the game that we have to dominate better if we want to keep competing at that level.”
Thursday’s defeat closed off one route to the Champions League for Arsenal.
Qualifying through their Premier League position looks like an even taller order but without that bargaining chip, it will be much harder to persuade players like Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette to stay at the club.
Asked about Aubameyang, whose current contract runs until the end of next season, Arteta said: “We don’t know, I think we will know that in May depending on where we finish, when we have a conversation with the club and a conversation with him.
“But at the moment nothing has changed, there’s still possibilities to go through.
“We need to put four, five, six wins in a row and then get into the final four or five games of the season with a real chance to compete and unbelievably we are there.
“It looked very far away two weeks ago. It looks a little bit closer at the moment but it’s still far and we still need to go day by day.”
But next up for Arsenal is tomorrow night’s FA Cup tie at Portsmouth.
The match is part of the first ever midweek set of FA Cup matches, a development made necessary by the introduction of the winter break.
But Arteta warned that players are “cracking” under the strain of too many games and more is needed to be done.
His old boss at Manchester City, Pep Guardiola, has proposed scrapping the League Cup, whose final City compete in today.
Arteta said: “I don’t know, I think there are a lot of ways around it. We’re not going to please everyone with the decisions that have to be made.
“What is for sure is that for players it’s an enormous amount of games.
“The intensity is raising every single year, the level of pressure too, and sometimes it’s too much for them.
“Something has to be done because you can see players are cracking and cracking every season.
“You can sustain that for one season, two seasons, but after three or four seasons you end up paying the price and I think the quality at some stage will drop.
“But as well we have a history, a massive culture here with the cup games and to go against that is difficult.”
