Arsenal of England’s fast-rising third choice goalkeeper, Arthur Okonkwo has found some consolation coming his way, following his howler that gave Hibernian of Scotland a goal against his team, as The Gunners’ coach, Mikel Arteta downplayed the lad’s error.
Megasportsarena.com reports that, although Arsenal went on to lose the game 2-1 and a lot of flak followed from their insatiable fans, Arteta refused to blame Okonkwo for giving The Hibs an easy lead.
The gaffer instead went on to comfort the newly promoted first team shot-stopper, but admitted his side looked tired in the encounter, in which the opponents’ second goal appeared to have been scored from an offside position.
Despite Arsenal dominating the game, Daniel Mackay put Hibernian 2-0 up in the 69th minute before Emile Smith Rowe halved the deficit for Okonkwo’s side with eight minutes left on the clock, following which Arteta parried the keeper’s foibles in Tuesday’s friendly at Easter Road.
The gaffer comforted Okonkwo over his non-competitive debut for The Gunners, though he kept goal for only the first half as the north London club were beaten by their Scottish opponents, in a game that came more than ten years after he arrived at Emirates Stadium as a schoolboy,
Technical comments about the game noted that Okonkwo looked nervy in the opening minutes and almost gifted a goal to Hibernian in the tenth minute when he took his eye off the ball as he came to collect a delivery.
Hibernian then took the lead in the 21st minute when Okonkwo failed to deal with a back pass from Cedric and Martin Boyle pounced on the error to open the scoring, but the Nigerian-born lad grew in confidence as the game progressed.
The highlight of his performance was when he palmed away a long-range effort from Hibernian striker, Stephen Bradley in the 37th minute, which left Arteta excited and the coach submitted: “We’ve trained really hard and the players were a little bit leggy. We conceded the first goal, an accident, and the second goal was clearly offside.”
