‘We are conceding too many simple goals’; Mikel Arteta reacts after Arsenal's 2-2 draw against Sporting CP

Reaction from Mikel Arteta at Jose Alvale Stium in Lisbon on Thursday after his Arsenal side were held to a 2-2 draw by Sporting in opening leg of ir Europa League last 16 tie.

William Saliba opened scoring for visitors midway through first half, Goncalo Inacio equalised for hosts on 34 minutes and Paulinho put Sporting ahe ten minutes after restart.

Arsenal levelled just after hour, Granit Xhaka's attempted through ball deflecting past Sporting goalkeeper an for an unfortunate own goal against Hidemasa Morita.

"I said that when you concede two poor goals like we did today away from home in Europe, it's very difficult to get a very positive result that we expected it. I think game h different phases, especially because we gave too many balls away, too many simple balls in our own half. And we gave m hope and we gave m capacity to have se transition moments which y are good at. In or moments we h total control of game. We lost a little bit of threat today especially with four players we were missing in our front line. So some positives because we showed again our resilience to get back on game. But we need to defend our box much better and we are going to be better in return leg to beat m."

On team t playing at ir best and second leg.

", we're t and today we h to go against a few issues that we h in last few days. We have lost a few players, we lost three out of our four strikers, but in this competition if you want to go through you will have to go through difficult moments. We knew that, we are alive. Everything is still to be played at Emirates. Hopefully we will play better and deserve to win game."

return leg in London is scheduled for 16th March.