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Usually when Mikel Arteta faces the press after a defeat he comes out swinging with the ferocity and zeal of a man who believes his team can still come back to deliver more. After witnessing Newcastle deliver the knockout blow to his side’s Champions League hopes though, he could do little more than lay down and accept defeat on Monday night.

The Spaniard stopped short of accusing his players of betrayal, but could not hide the immense disappointment he clearly felt. Normally I sit here, I can defend what we've done. Today it's not easy,” he said when asked to play coroner on Arsenal’s surely terminal top-four tilt. “Newcastle were 100 times better than us in every department from the beginning to the end and it is very hard to accept it.”

Arteta though must accept some of the blame too. This was a defeat as predictable as it was depressing.

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Perhaps the reason the Gunners fandom was so anxious about their Champions League hopes after defeat to Tottenham, was how perilous the trip to Newcastle looked on paper. In cauldron-like atmospheres at Anfield, Old Trafford, Goodison Park and of course the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Arsenal have melted away this season and tasked with silencing a bouncing Toon Army buoyed by their final home game of a historic season, the pattern repeated itself.

It speaks to a deficit in