Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta admits seeing Liverpool winning the Premier League has been “painful” after they were crowned champions last week.
Liverpool’s resounding 5-1 win at home to Tottenham on Sunday saw them win their second Premier League title.
Arteta’s Gunners fell short in a title race for a third successive season and, asked whether Liverpool winning the league has hurt him, Arteta said: “Yes, big time.
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“I understand that it’s a team who have been more consistent, they’ve had the ingredients to win it and it’s been painful.
“I want to congratulate Liverpool and what they’ve done, the manner they’ve done it and how consistent they’ve been, and I think they fully deserved to win it.
“They’ve been the better team, had the better attributes, had their squad available consistently and we are going to try again.
“They’ve had this distraction [with Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold‘s contracts] but they still had them on the pitch the whole time which is positive.
“They are a club who over the last 10 years have been fighting for trophies, winning big trophies like the Champions League. They are deserved champions.”
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Arsenal‘s shortcomings have not been helped by their poor injury record, with six first-team players still out.
Arteta, who was also without the suspended Thomas Partey for their 1-0 defeat in the Champions League semi-final first leg against Paris St Germain on Tuesday, has been “shocked” by the volume of their setbacks.
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“I was very shocked before the game against PSG because I walked into the dressing room and suddenly I saw all of them together seated,” Arteta added on his side’s injury list.
“It was Takehiro Tomiyasu and next to him was Riccardo Calafiori, Gabriel Magalhaes, Thomas Partey, Kai Havertz, Gabriel Jesus and Jorginho.
“I said ‘that’s a starting lineup’ and we haven’t had them for many months.”
