'I'm happy with attitude, not score'

Shkodran Mustafi was outstanding against Manchester City.

The Germany defender epitomised our fighting spirit at both ends of the pitch and soared to head home our second equaliser from Mesut Ozil’s corner.

• Wenger - That will help us restart
• Welbeck - My take on the City game
• Wenger on Alexis, fans and injuries

Here’s Shkodran’s take on Sunday’s 2-2 draw.

on whether he’s happy with the point…
To be honest I’m not happy with the point, but I’m happy with the attitude we showed on the pitch. I think we played well, we attacked well and won the ball in their half often. This is what we wanted to do, we wanted to press high, try to win the ball as early as possible and then catch them on the counter-attack. I think we did that well. I’m obviously a bit disappointed with the second goal. I think we should have dealt with that better, but in the end I think it’s a fair point. We have to take that and continue.

on the team’s character…
I’m not happy about going [a goal] down to be honest. We’ve been going down in a lot of games but we did well to come back and I think that shows how strong we are. The only thing we have to do is focus from the beginning, try not to go down and then play our football like we play when we are a goal down. Then I think we will be able to deal with every team.

on whether it’s been difficult to focus on the pitch with speculation off it…
They’re talking a lot about the manager outside the club, but in the changing room it’s not a discussion. He’s the manager, we’re the players and we are in every day to work on trying to win games. That’s all we have in our hands, everything else is something people like to talk about. That’s normal because it’s a big sport but it’s nothing in our hands. We are only focused on trying to give everything on the pitch.

on the result…
To be honest, I’d rather have won today. That was a game we all wanted to win today but if there’s anything to be satisfied with, it’s the performance. I think we gave a good performance, showed character - especially when coming from behind twice - and I just think we did lots of good things today, though we did do some things wrong too, like conceding the second goal so soon after equalising. I think that was a bit unfortunate but we showed character, which is important. We gave everything until the end - we wanted to win it at the end but at the end of it all we have to take a point.

on what Wenger said at the break…
He didn’t have to say much. We spoke about things we had to improve, some details that hadn’t gone so well in the first half. But we knew that everything was still to play for. In the first half we were good, we were dangerous and we knew the game would still be open for us in the second half if we utilised our potential. We knew it was important not to go 3-1 down because if you’re chasing the equaliser and concede again, it’s game over. But we were professional, we kept on playing, equalised and then tried to win it until the end.

on his goal and his performance…
For me it was disappointing because we wanted to win the game. Scoring a goal is always a nice moment, especially when it brings us back into the game. I really thought we could win it so it was especially nice to score. To conclude, I’m happy about the goal, but I would rather have had the three points.