Arteta on the 77 seconds that nearly cost Arsenal a derby

Seventy-seven seconds into a London derby at the Emirates, Arsenal were behind. Morgan Rogers volleyed Chelsea in front before the home crowd had settled, and although Arsenal turned the afternoon around to win 2-1 on Sunday 6 September 2026, their manager walked into his post-match press conference still turning over the goal his side gave away.

That tension — a flaw admitted in one breath, a performance celebrated in the next — was the whole story of Mikel Arteta's evening in the press room.

A Known Flaw, An Exceptional Response

There is something we do badly when we concede that goal, that we discussed before.— Mikel Arteta, speaking after Arsenal 2-1 Chelsea at the Emirates

The weight sits in the last four words. "That we discussed before" is not a manager bemoaning luck; it is a manager admitting a fault that was already on the training-ground agenda and happened anyway. Arteta did not blame the finish — Rogers' volley earned the respect he gave it — but he filed the concession in the least comfortable category a coach has: a known problem, still unfixed.

The response was what delighted him. "I thought it was an exceptional performance," he said. "I enjoyed every minute from beginning to end." Kai Havertz levelled against his former club, a third Premier League goal against Chelsea, then made the winner — a dummy that left the visiting defence flat-footed and opened the lane for Martin Odegaard to strike in the 50th minute.

Asked about his captain, Arteta reached for a superlative: confidence-wise "it's the highest I've seen him", with "a point to prove from last season as well". On Havertz the answer went somewhere warmer — he looks "settled, happy", Arteta noted, "and some great things have happened in his personal life as well". The thread joining the two answers arrived when he described what the pair now produce together: "When you start to feel the chemistry they have between them and what they can produce, it's great." On the evidence of the winner — one player's dummy, the other's finish — that was a description of the goal as much as the mood.

Mosquera Fitness Concern

If the attack gave Arteta reasons for optimism, the afternoon carried one cost at the back. Cristhian Mosquera's early exit was the only fitness item to come out of the room, and the manager framed it with deliberate caution: "He had a muscular issue, and we think it's not too much. But we need to wait and see the next few days."

Arteta declined to put a timeline on the defender's return, and Arsenal have published nothing more precise than those two sentences. Exactly what goes wrong when Arsenal concede early stayed equally guarded — the fault has a name inside the dressing room, and the manager kept it there. Both questions will be waiting at the next press conference; on Sunday's evidence, Arteta will take that trade every week, so long as the response keeps looking like this one.

Cover photo: Emirates Stadium, by Arne Müseler / arne-mueseler.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons.