Hector Bellerin: ‘Teams are not beating us, we are losing against ourselves’

Hector Bellerin claimed Arsenal were beating themselves after their European hopes suffered a fresh blow at Wolves.

The Gunners slipped to a 2-1 defeat at Molineux on Tuesday, with David Luiz and Bernd Leno sent off.

Nicolas Pepe’s opener was cancelled out by Ruben Neves’ penalty – when Luiz saw red for clipping Willian Jose – before Joao Moutinho’s 30-yard second-half stunner won it for the hosts.

Leno was dismissed for handling outside his area with 18 minutes left as the visitors’ seven-game unbeaten run came to an end, leaving them 10th in the Premier League standings.

Bellerin said: “I always say that teams are not beating us, we are losing against ourselves. It’s for us to learn. Hopefully this will be the last time. We were on such a good run, great momentum, great confidence in the team.

“We just need to forget this step because situations like this are not going to happen very often. We’ll go on to the next one.”

Gunners boss Mikel Arteta is considering appealing against Luiz’s dismissal, but Bellerin accepts Arsenal’s tally of five red cards – the most in the Premier League this season – is not acceptable.

“One hundred per cent (we’ve had too many red cards),” the 25-year-old full-back told the club’s website.

“We’ve shown that when we’re 11 against 11 on that pitch, it’s completely different. We had complete control in the first half and we probably should have been 2-0 up by the end of it. We paid for those mistakes.”

Wolves earned their first win in nine games to claim their first double over Arsenal since 1978-79, having survived an early onslaught when the visitors hit the post through Bukayo Saka and had a goal ruled out by VAR for offside.

“When things are well, it’s always easier to work, but the really good teams need to come back when things are not going well,” Neves told the club’s website.

“It’s really good for us that we talk. We’ve been talking a lot during these last games because it’s not been easy to play.

“The last few games have not been easy for us. We’ve tried our best to get the points but we did not get them so we wanted to play well, but mainly we wanted the three points and it didn’t matter how we played.

“It’s good that we played really well. We were struggling a little bit at the beginning but that was about our confidence.

“We need to get that confidence back and we got the three points, so we can start doing some good things in the Premier League.”

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