Kieran Tierney says Arsenal’s players are letting Mikel Arteta down and must take the blame for the club’s ‘terrible’ form.
The Gunners were beaten 1-0 by Burnley on Sunday evening and sit just five points above the relegation zone in the Premier League.
They have now lost four successive home games in the league for the first time since 1959, a run of form which has led to many questioning whether Arteta remains the right man for the job.
But Tierney is adamant that the Spaniard is a ‘great manager’ who still has the full backing of his squad and says it’s the players who must take the blame for the crisis that is now engulfing Emirates Stadium.
“It’s not good enough,” said the left-back. “There is no way to disguise it. It’s terrible, to be honest. It’s not what we are, not where we are as a club.
“It’s not what the fans deserve, it’s not what the manager deserves, it’s not what the board deserve. It’s us players that need to take responsibility for this.
“We have got a great manager and we believe in him 100 per cent. The blame is on us, nobody else.”
Tierney added: “Everything is going wrong. We are working on the right things, we are doing the right things in training, we are working as hard as we can, but just things that can go wrong are going wrong.
“That happens in football. It is the lowest we have probably all felt in our careers and nobody is going to help us except ourselves.
“So we just need to keep believing, keep positive. I know it is hard. I know the fans deserve much better and all I can do is apologise to every single one of the supporters through these tough times.
“We just need to work hard. It is easy enough to say we want to do better, but we need to actually show we want to do better.”
Arsenal were well on top against Burnley on Sunday night and had been looking likely to break the deadlock before Granit Xhaka was sent off just before the hour mark.
The Switzerland international was dismissed for grabbing Ashley Westwood round the throat, an act Arteta later labelled as unacceptable.
Tierney admits going down to 10 men made things difficult, but the Scotland international says that should not be used as an excuse for the defeat.
“Red cards change games for and against you,” he said. “When you are a man down it is always going to be tougher, especially against a team like Burnley. They’re physical, they’re good at it, they play to their strengths and they did that tonight.
“But even if we do go down to 10 men we should be winning the game at that point. We should be taking chances. We are not scoring enough goals.
“Confidence is massive in football with everyone. When everyone is out to get you of course confidence is going to be low, but we can’t let that affect us. We can’t use that as an excuse.
“We are Arsenal. We need to be better than this and we are not performing up to standard. We need to be better throughout the full game. We need to take chances, we need to score goals.
“It’s Arsenal. It’s just not good enough.”