Arsenal were thoroughly embarrassed by Man City at Wembley but the Boss refused to criticise his team and felt that the Gunners were well in control for the first 45 minutes. “I felt the game, we had the first good chance, a very easy one that we missed,” he told Sky Sports.
“After that we made a big mistake on the first goal. But we controlled them quite well in the first half.”
In the second half, Arsenal were totally obliterated, but Wenger decided that we still would have had a chance if the referee had ruled it as offside, despite the VAR being used to confirm that it was a fair goal. “Second half we came out, I felt we had a poor start. We were unlucky as well because the second goal is offside.
“I just watched it again. The second goal was an important goal in this game and for me, it was 100 per-cent offside.”
“After that it was too much for us. I wanted to make a change at 2-0 but the game didn’t stop and after 3-0 it was too late.
“We analyse all the games in a very mathematical way. We didn’t give too many chances away today but we gave easy chances away and we didn’t create enough.
“Congratulations to Manchester City. In the end they deserved the win.”
At least he didn’t think that Arsenal were the better side! As for our awful defending, the Boss felt that it wasn’t too bad, it was just a couple of ‘lapses of concentration’ that gave City their goals but the players couldn’t be faulted for their ‘application’. “When you lose 3-0, of course you have to look at defending better,” Wenger said.
“I still feel sometimes for periods in the game we defended very well. In other periods we lose concentration and against quality teams you pay for that.
“It’s not the application that was missed, it was just lapses of concentration at important moments of the game.”
I’m not sure if he was watching the same game as us, but I thought that we were made to look inferior after the first ten minutes and our defending was diabolical. The players looked uninterested and didn’t start playing again until the last ten minutes when the game was well and truly over. And you don’t want me to talk about whether I would be criticising the players!
Darren N