Nottingham Forest head coach Steve Cooper has taken aim at his side’s stars in ruthless fashion on Sunday night.
Forest, of course, marked their return to action earlier this evening.
Riding high on the back of a shock downing of heavyweights Liverpool last time out, the relegation-battling outfit made the trip to the Emirates, eyeing a 2nd odds-defying result on the spin.
Safe to say, however, that upon the full-time whistle sounding in north London, the day’s visitors were brought firmly back down to earth.
Goals on the part of all of Gabriel Martinelli, Martin Odegaard and Thomas Partey, alongside a brace from substitute Reiss Nelson, ultimately gave rise to a 5-0 final scoreline.
🇬🇭Thomas Partey scores his 4th Premier league goal.
It’s been a great afternoon https://t.co/5CzBefBCdp
— George Addo Jnr (@addojunr) October 30, 2022
On the back of the action coming to a close in England’s capital, it should therefore come as little surprise to hear of Steve Cooper being altogether unhappy with his side’s latest efforts.
Speaking to the media on Sunday evening, Cooper absolutely tore into his players, revealing his take that they failed to do the ‘bare minimum’ in simply ‘competing’ on the day:
‘We don’t just have to take that on the chin – we have to deal with it.
‘We fell way short today in terms of competing. Of course we could have played really well here and not go anything out of the game. It was always going to be a tough game.
‘But in competitive sport, the bare minimum you have to do is to stand up and be counted and fight and be hard to beat. And we just didn’t do that at the start of the game.
‘The start of the second half, we were nowhere near competitive enough. I can’t think of tackles, or even fouls, that can happen when you compete and even bookings.
‘Players running past us, one-twos etc, in the end, if you are not going to do that, particularly at this level you are going to get hurt.
‘It is frustrating because it is something we have made good steps on in the last few weeks.
‘But to take more than a step backward in that part of the game today is more than frustrating and it ended up costing us.’
Nottingham Forest boss Steve Cooper tears into his players following 5-0 defeat by Arsenal https://t.co/MYNXbOh7RW
— Mail Sport (@MailSport) October 30, 2022
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