Mikel Arteta warned that Arsenal must ‘punish teams’ when on top as they ended their US pre-season tour with a 2-1 defeat by Liverpool.
The Gunners went behind to two first-half goals before pulling one back through Kai Havertz. They improved in the second half but couldn’t find another goal to claw back the Reds.
It concludes a positive tour for the north London club who gave playing time to youngsters such as Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly, while also completing the signing of defender Riccardo Calafiori in Philadelphia.
He said: ‘We have to punish teams. Especially with the aggression that we played with and the amount of times that we won the ball in dangerous areas and then not enough happened.
‘It happened basically the other way around. That’s where we need to improve.’
Mikel Arteta has called for his Arsenal side to be more clinical following their loss to Liverpool
Arteta was left pleased with the likes of the academy players he brought to the US.
‘I'm really pleased with all of them,’ he said.
‘Unfortunately I wanted to give opportunities to all of them, we didn't have enough time to do so.
‘But especially the ones that played, I think they performed and responded incredibly well. So that's something that we take from the tour as well, that we have a lot of talent there that we want to use and they showed that they are very much pushing to earn the right to play with us.’
On the omission of Calafiori from tonight’s squad, he added: ‘We had to manage him. He had a very busy 48 hours before his flight. Then it was the jetlag and he hasn’t trained with the team yet.
‘We want to build him slowly, to get to know him first. We will have plenty of time to see him.’