09 March 2023 , 23:01
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Martin Keown has blasted Arsenal goalkeeper Matt Turner for his performance in the Gunners' draw at Sporting Lisbon.
Turner was making just his seventh appearance of the season as Mikel Arteta's men travelled to Portugal for the first leg of the Europa League last-16 tie. The American looked nervy throughout the game and was at least partially at fault for both of Sporting's goals.
First, he backtracked after appearing to come for a corner, leaving Goncalo Inacio with a simple header to equalise. Then, he made the ill-thought-out decision to parry a shot straight into the path of Paulinho, who fired in Sporting's second.
Martin Keown pointed the finger at Matt Turner after Arsenal's draw at Sporting Lisbon (BT Sport)An own-goal from Hidemasa Morita ultimately salvaged a draw for the Gunners, but Keown was left unimpressed by Turner's performance and slammed the keeper for his role in Sporting's first goal.
"Really, he killed everybody with the first goal because he starts to come and then he goes back. (Jakub) Kiwior has got to do more than that too but if I’m playing regularly with this goalkeeper, I’m thinking I’m going to have to try and head things, because I can’t necessarily trust him," the Highbury hero said on BT Sport.
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"He had a first scary moments in the first half. He’s got to come and be dominant and win the ball from the corner, but he didn’t do it. The goalkeeper has to learn from it. You make up your mind to come for the ball and you go and reach it at the highest point.
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Matt Turner endured a disappointing night in Portugal"If you look, the goalkeeper comes and then he backs off. He kills the central defenders. I tell you what I'd do when I'm playing for the next one, I'm coming, I'm heading that. I'll take my own goalkeeper out because I can't rely on him.
"For sure, (Aaron) Ramsdale would have come and dealt with it. But then it's a goalkeeper who's not played much football, so let's give him a little bit of a break, but then he has to learn doesn't he? He has to learn quickly from his mistakes."
Arsenal boss Arteta was also left frustrated by his side's poor defending for both of Sporting's goals. While he did not point the finger at Turner outright, he insisted his side had to improve defensively.
"I don’t know what it was. It’s very difficult when it happens in a second, but for sure in that space, somebody cannot have a free header and you concede a goal because it’s too simple," the Spaniard said of the first goal.
"When you concede two poor goals like we did today away from home in Europe, it’s very difficult to get the positive result that we expected. We need to defend our box much better and we have to be in the return leg to beat them.
"We are conceding too many simple goals and we’ve talked about the importance of boxes, and especially in a competition where you are in or out. Today, we didn’t defend that well enough, and we have to do better up against our opponents.
"We’ve had a lot of really emotional games recently, and today we made a lot of changes, meaning that cohesion needs some time. You could feel that in the first 10, 15 minutes that we needed some time to adapt and to click, but if we don’t expose them, that’s never going to happen."