Per Mertesacker faced the media after Arsenal's draw at Tottenham. Below is a transcript of his interview:
on being happy with a point…
No. I think we fought all the way through which is what matters in the derby.
on the red card…
I think we need to be more disciplined in those occasions. There was no danger, he was at the sideline as well. It took us 15 minutes to cope with that, being one man down, but after we played fantastically and could have scored a third one I think. We had couple of good breaks and how the team responded after 15 minutes was great. In between it took us a bit but in the heat of the game it is difficult. Overall, the spirt is great and we fought until the end.
on mentality…
Even before it was 10 men, we played the perfect away game in my opinion. We defended well together, it was a high tempo from the start. It was unbelievable how we coped with that. We scored first, then we looked dangerous on the break. Up to the red card, we played fantastic and it was a good response. Afterwards, it took us 20 minutes to take advantage 1-0 down. It sounds weird but the team is great.
on the title chance…
I have no idea. We have to take care of ourselves. As you mentioned, [for] a team with low confidence and no belief, we played pretty well today. We don’t need that. It’s nonsense. We just concentrate on ourselves and that’s the only way to compete and win games.
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
