Laurent Koscielny has given his take on why we were unable to secure all three points against Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday night.
Olivier Giroud’s penalty and Marco Verratti’s own goal had cancelled out Edinson Cavani's opener, but Lucas met Hatem Ben Arfa’s corner with just 13 minutes left to secure a point for the French champions.
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“We tried to win but we conceded the second goal and I think that killed us,” Koscielny told Arsenal Player. “We pressed hard in the last 10 minutes of the first half and first 15 or 20 minutes of the second half, and they were in trouble because they lost so many balls in their own half.
“We were able to create danger in their own half so it was better for us to press high, but after the second goal we stopped pressing and dropped a little bit. We gave them lots of opportunities which is why we conceded the corner and then conceded the goal.”
The result means we need Ludogorets to avoid defeat against PSG in December while we win in Basel to finish top of Group A, but Koscielny is not convinced a first-place finish necessarily gives teams the advantage in the last 16.
“We have a lot of big teams in this competition now and a lot of great teams finish second, so it’s difficult to know,” he said. “We will see what happens in the draw but first we have to finish the job well.
“They have a game against Ludogorets and we are playing Basel, so we will see. We want to finish first because then our second leg will be at home, so we want to win our last game to give us the best chance of finishing first.”
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