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Wenger on defeat, Swansea and Fabianski

Arsene Wenger faced the media after Arsenal’s 1-0 defeat against Swansea City at Emirates Stadium on Monday. You can read a full transcript of his press conference below:

on the defeat…
We were unlucky I think against a team who refused to play completely and just defended. It was a question of being patient enough and if we couldn’t win it not to lose it. Overall I was encouraged by the quality that we showed in the second half, but it’s frustrating. When you cannot win a game, don’t lose it. We knew exactly what could happen. It was not even a break. We were warned of the kind of goal they could score with Montero kicking the ball in the air and we were short in jumping for the ball. For the rest we rushed our finishing because we had plenty of chances in the second half. It was just a question of scoring a goal.

on whether Ospina could have stopped the goal…
I don’t know because I have to see it again. Did the defender not jump or was it that he could have come out? We knew that those kind of crosses are crosses that are easy to defend.

on the Manchester United game being crucial now…
We still have a game in hand. What is crucial is to respond on Sunday and show that it was an accident today. That is the most important thing.

on Lukasz Fabianski…
He did well tonight. I believe as well on some occasions we made it too easy for him.

on missing chances…
We’ve scored plenty of goals until recently. In the last two home games we didn’t score and that was frustrating because when you have so much of the ball and play with such accuracy around the box. They defended well. They came just to defend with four defenders and six midfielders, and they defended. That’s it. If you win, you’re fantastic but if you lose people say to you, ‘why did you not play?’. They won so they are fantastic.

on the players getting nervous…
I believe you have to deal with that on the pitch and that’s where the players can’t get caught by the anxiety of the crowd. I can understand that the crowd was anxious but on the pitch when the players had the ball that shouldn’t interfere with your finishing.

on the importance of finishing in the top three…
It’s very important.

on reinforcing that to the players ahead of the cup final…
The players want to play in the cup final. The players are very disappointed, they wanted to win the game and overall I believe they put the effort and desire in to win it tonight. We had lapses of concentration at the end and that’s where we were caught.

on Arsenal’s inconsistency inside the box…
I just told you, we rushed our finishing. Sometimes we were maybe too eager to finish alone rather than passing the ball. Sometimes we had to force the situation and in the end you have to give them credit - they defended well.

on Swansea’s style…
Look tonight I cannot say that they played a lot. I don’t know how many passes they made tonight, I haven’t seen the stats. They came here to defend and they didn’t play. We couldn’t take advantage of it.

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