Arsenal captain Martin Ødegaard has warned the Premier League champions they have no time to feel sorry for themselves after suffering a shock exit from the Carabao Cup at the hands of League Two side Fleetwood Town on Tuesday night.
Bruno Guimarães saw his penalty saved in a shootout before Fleetwood's teenage defender Conor Haughey stepped up to fire the hosts into the quarterfinals with one of the biggest upsets in the competition's history.
Arsenal fell behind to Aaron Loupalo-Bi's 21st-minute strike in a disjointed first-half performance after Mikel Arteta made nine changes, albeit still fielding a side filled with international experience.
Ødegaard's introduction at half-time sparked significant improvement as the Norway midfielder pulled the strings in midfield and Viktor Gyökeres quickly dragged the Gunners level with his first goal of the season.
But they passed up a string of chances to go in front before the 85th-minute dismissal of Max Dowman, while Fleetwood stopper Lynch came up with two more huge saves in stoppage time to force the shootout.
"It's very frustrating to go out," Ødegaard said. "Obviously, the way we've played was not on the level. We need to do much, much better than we did.
"Frustrating, but congratulations to Fleetwood and we look forward to the next game already and bounce back.
"They did well so we have to give them credit, but I think [it] was about us not being on our level, we need to do better. I thought we improved during the game, but again, we need to step up even more -- so that's a shame."
Arsenal will be back in the north west at the weekend for a big test against Liverpool at Anfield, and will need to have this disappointment well out of their systems before then as they look to keep the pressure on at the top of the Premier League, having moved level with Manchester City at the weekend.
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"We can't feel sorry for ourselves," Ødegaard added. "We need to move on -- we have a big game at the weekend, so bouncing back at the weekend is all we can do now."
Arteta twice tasted success in this competition while part of Pep Guardiola's Manchester City staff, and took Arsenal to the final last season where they were on the wrong end of another City triumph.
This time the Arsenal boss had to hold his hands up as he congratulated Fleetwood on their success.
"That is why football is entertainment, especially in this competition and in this country, things like that" the Spaniard said. "They believe in it and the people have it because of the history. We didn't want to go through this and we are extremely sad but we need to congratulate the opponent."