Arsenal midfielder Granit Xhaka was unhappy with the team's defeat to Aston Villa.

The Gunners were hoping to build on results against Liverpool and Manchester City by pushing for a top seven spot in the league.

But they fell to a team in the relegation zone in a narrow 1-0 defeat. And Xhaka admitted the performance was not good enough.

On what went wrong, Xhaka told the club website: "I think it was Aston Villa, their fight, they put everything out in each half and in my opinion they deserved the three points."

He admitted set pieces caused them problems: "Yes, we have a gameplan and we know they are very strong on set pieces but we did too many fouls near our box, too many corners against them but we didn't play our gameplan.

"They were more aggressive than us and deserved it."

And Xhaka also acknowledged the game was a challenge after having so many tough games in quick succession.

"Yes, of course, to beat two big, big teams… but in my opinion you can't come here and play like this.

"It's not good enough and you can't play with this mentality. It was not enough to take something from today, and we knew if we won today, the last game if we won as well we could have got into the Europa League, but now we have to win the FA Cup and we have more pressure.

"But we will do everything to win the FA Cup now."