Steven Gerrard says Aston Villa showed Arsenal too much respect in their Premier League encounter.
The Gunners took all three points on the back of a strong first half showing and a goal from Bakayo Saka.
Villa improved after the break and hit the post through Ollie Watkins, but it wasn’t enough to take anything from the game.
He said: “It’s a frustrating result. I don’t think we brought enough to the game in the first half and we deserved to be 1-0 down.
“We waited too long to come to the game. We showed them too much respect for 45 minutes. For half of the game, we weren’t close to where we wanted to be.
“We’ve had a full week to prepare for this game and they’ve had a midweek game, so it should be us on the front foot and it should have been us out of the blocks quicker.
“We were too respectful and too passive in the first 45 minutes.”
Gerrard’s team now head into the international break on the back of consecutive defeats, with work to do ahead of the final nine Premier League games.
Gerrard said: “We’ll dust ourselves down now and reset.
“We’ll try and finish the season as strong as we can over the last nine games and then it’s a big summer and a big pre-season.
“We need to keep striving to be better. First of all, we need to believe we can be better; these players need to believe we can get there. I certainly believe.
“We can’t wait until half-time when we’re at home to start playing. We need to be more aggressive, we need to see more belief and we need to back ourselves.”
