Arteta: I wanted to go for win even when down to 10 men

Mikel Arteta said he was determined to go for the win at Crystal Palace yesterday even though his Arsenal team were down to 10 men for much of the second half.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was sent off for a tackle Arteta admitted was “nasty” on Max Meyer – Aubameyang himself apologised for the incident after the game.

But Arteta said he still wanted to push for the three points, despite the numerical disadvantage.

He said: “"That's what I want to see from my team. Their reaction was really positive, they wanted to win the game, they went for it. We had three or four really good situations.

"We created the best chance with Nicolas and Lacazette (when the Gunners hot the post towards the end) and we were unlucky not to win the game."

“I was very pleased with the way we started, the way we dominated the first half - things I saw that we worked on in training and the way they executed them.

"But obviously after the break we knew they were going to push and get more bodies forward and put us under more pressure. We started to give away a lot of free kicks - something we have to try to avoid in this ground and then we switched off.

“For the goal we completely switched off. We allowed them to put the cross in, we turned and conceded a deflection and I'm very disappointed with that.”

On Aubameyang’s tackle on Meyer, which puts the Gunners’’ top scorer out for the next three games, Arteta said: “I just watched it and it looked nasty to be fair.

“Knowing Auba, there was no intention to make sure a tackle, hopefully he hasn't been injured and we are sorry for that, but they made a decision and we have to accept it."

Arsenal lost influential midfielder Lucas Torreira to injury at half-time, the Uruguayan replaced by youngster Mateo Guendouzi.

And Arteta said: “"Well, when Matteo came on he was really good but obviously he (Torreira) has been in good form and given us a lot but I had to get him off because he wasn't feeling good."

"That's a massive blow, you know how important he is for the team and maybe we're going to lose him for a couple of games."