Wednesday night’s game at Bayern couldn’t have gone much worse, and Arsene Wenger himself described the second half of that 5-1 defeat as “a nightmare”.
The post-match inquest continued at the manager’s press conference on Friday and here’s how the boss responded:
on his considered view on the Bayern defeat…
That we were in an ideal position at half-time, because we scored a goal away from home. After that, it all went wrong for us. I think we looked quite defensively solid in the first half. We lost Koscielny in the second half and after that we lost our structure and our organisation a bit. We were a bit naive on the different goals we conceded. At 3-1 I felt we were mentally affected by the result and were much more vulnerable.
on how he feels 36 hours on from the game…
The main emotion is that everybody after a big disappointment regroups and focuses on what is in front of us - the next game - and to take care of the consequences a disappointing result can have on everybody’s spirit inside the club, and to make sure that we bounce back and focus on the next game. That’s what life is about.
on putting Bayern into perspective…
What is important for us is to focus on our next game and let everybody judge and criticise. We have to deal with that, with the media, and focus on what is our job. We can analyse with clarity what happened and focus and take care of what is in front of us and what we can influence. It’s not the last result - we can influence that when we play against Bayern at home. At the moment we have to look at our next game.
on the team looking ‘mentally jaded’ on Wednesday and how that can be changed…
Just what I told you - rebuild confidence and belief in what we think is important in the game. That means the way we want to play football, the way we want to defend, the way we want to attack and the way we want to respond together.
on whether there was a row in the dressing room…
No. Not at all. Everybody was of course deeply disappointed and affected but there was no incident in the dressing room apart from a huge sadness and disappointment.
More quizzes coming soon!
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