The Gunners produced a lacklustre display at the MetLife Stadium as Mikel Arteta’s new-look side showed that there is still plenty of room for improvement ahead of the new season. Goals from Bruno Fernandes and Jadon Sancho gave Man United the victory over their long-time rivals.
Despite being a pre-season friendly, the game was not without controversy. Supporters of both sides took to debating the severity of respective challenges from Lisandro Martinez and Jurrien Timber, while Man United boss Erik ten Hag attempted to voice his frustrations towards the officials at half-time.
Saka admitted he was disappointed to not produce a better team performance against one of the club’s old foes but is confident that the Gunners will use the setback to fuel the remainder of pre-season. There are three weeks until Arsenal’s Premier League opener against Nottingham Forest and Saka believes the club know what they need to do, physically and mentally, in order to get back up to full speed.
“It’s obviously tough to take, whether it’s a friendly or not against United,” Saka said. “We’ll learn from it and you can’t really give two goals away like that against a team like this because then it’s really hard to come back. We just need to learn from it.Physically we want to get to a level that we were at last season and then go to another level and keep increasing that. Tactically we need to integrate everyone. We need to understand our game plan and how we play and keep progressing in each game so that when we come to the first game we’re ready.”
Arsenal are next in action against Barcelona in Los Angeles, with the game taking place in the early hours of Thursday morning (3.30am BST kick-off). Mikel Arteta’s side will then host Monaco on Wednesday, August 2 before taking on Manchester City in the Community Shield on Sunday, August 6.
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