Mikel Arteta had asked for aggression and, while a point at Bournemouth was not quite the way he would have wanted his
Arsenal reign to begin, his players dug in and rallied to garner a point in his first game in charge. Arsenal’s disappointing run goes on – they have won just one of their past 14 matches – but Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang cancelled out Dan Gosling’s opener to get the new era under way on a dank day on the south coast.
After watching Saturday’s draw at Everton from the stands, Arteta lived and breathed every kick from the technical area here. Before kick-off a throng of photographers waited for the Spaniard to take his seat in the away dugout and the cameras were trained on his every move but they had a hard job keeping up with him. An animated Arteta spent the majority of the match hugging the touchline, in effect pinballing around his technical area and arching his back in frustration until Aubameyang’s scruffy second-half equaliser. At one point Arteta – his black jacket soaked through from the rain – skipped along in tandem with Bukayo Saka, urging Arsenal upfield.