Arteta wins, leads the Premier League by six points, and still wants Arsenal to stop chasing the perfect goal

A scrappy 1-0, a winning streak still intact, and a manager who, rather than simply celebrating, is asking for more. That's how Mikel Arteta summed up Arsenal's win over Hull City, a match that cost far more effort than the scoreline suggests and left the manager with one clear idea in his head: it's time to stop chasing the perfect goal.

The decisive goal came in the 72nd minute, courtesy of captain Martin Ødegaard, who tapped the ball in from close range after a match in which clear chances were hard to come by against a deep-lying opponent. With the win, Arsenal reached nine victories in ten matches, matching the club's best start to a season in its history, and moved six points clear at the top of the Premier League after Manchester City's loss to Nottingham Forest.

But the headline numbers don't mask a concern Arteta has been chewing over for a while: his team has now won eight matches this season by the narrowest possible margin. For the Spanish coach, that's no coincidence, it's a pattern that needs fixing before it costs them.

We need to be more efficient. We're one on one with the goalkeeper. That happened twice today. There's a penalty there, there's another situation inside the box where the ball is bouncing. So many shots that have been deflected, blocked. We need to find ways to be more efficient, sometimes even more pragmatic.Mikel Arteta

What's the underlying diagnosis? That Arsenal gets obsessed with the beautiful move when what's in front of them are low blocks that won't give up space. Arteta was blunt about it, almost like someone explaining to a friend why the team keeps making life harder than it needs to be.

Sometimes my feeling is that we're trying to score the perfect goal against these low blocks. We need to be much more chaotic than that, and that's it. And open the scoring much earlier, because obviously that's going to change the course of the match.Mikel Arteta

The manager insisted his side had more than enough chances to put the game away much earlier, but that a lack of clinical finishing forced them to fall back on another approach: build up volume, pile up situations in and around the box, and keep pushing until the opponent's resistance broke. "And that's exactly how we won the match," he added.

The VAR controversy and the penalty that wasn't given

Beyond the attacking performance, Arteta also felt his side had a clear penalty denied in the first half. The incident involved Kai Havertz, who was pulled by the shirt inside the box by Hull defender Nobel Mendy, though the German was in an offside position when the ball was played. Referee Farai Hallam was sent to the monitor, confirmed there was a foul on Havertz, but ended up awarding a free kick to Hull instead of a penalty, ruling that Havertz had not challenged for the ball before being in an offside position.

Arteta admitted he hadn't rewatched the incident after the match, but he did describe how he experienced the moment from the bench.

I haven't seen it again and I didn't see it in the moment, so I don't have to lie to you. I was surprised because when they sent the referee to the monitor, Benji was telling me it was a clear penalty. So now I hear they decided not to give it because of Kai's starting position, that he was offside. I don't know what the interpretation is. I'm sure they'll clarify it for us.Mikel Arteta

With the international break now underway, Arsenal have time to digest their manager's message before returning to action with their lead in the table intact, but with the job still ahead of them: becoming less reliant on the slim margin.