At a packed Aviva Stadium – consisting almost entirely of Arsenal supporters – we showed promising moments, but in the end our Spanish opponents proved too strong, with all the goals coming in the first half. 

“I'm disappointed with the result, obviously, because we are here to win football matches,” he said at full-time. “We had some fantastic moments in the first half, the way we played, the way we opened them up. We have to score first, clearly, in the two chances that we had before the score. 

“I’m very disappointed in the manner that we conceded the first goal, the two giveaways leading to the other two goals. It's true that the finishing quality from them was exceptional, but to win a football match, you have to compete at a different level, especially in those areas of the pitch and that's the learning from today.”

The game marked the end of our training camp in Spain and Ireland, and the boss made plenty of changes throughout the match, using 25 players in all. 

“Yeah, that's a lot of players and obviously you don't have that momentum and that rhythm, but we indeed have players coming in at different stages. We cannot risk the play; we need to be really smart about how we're going to progress them and the entire defeat is a good thing in pre-season to create even more fire in the belly.”

The boss praised the atmosphere created inside the stadium, and said he is looking forward now to the next phase of pre-season, when we will play twice at Emirates Stadium.

“It was incredible the atmosphere that they created in the stadium, so thank you so much to all of them for coming and creating such an atmosphere in a pre-season match and we are very thankful.

“It's been 10 days away from home, so we’re looking forward to coming back, seeing some players as well. Martin will be back and then the English and Spanish internationals will be back soon as well. So, we're going to start to have more and more players at the moment, we still miss a lot of them.”