on another 1-1 draw...
"Well, it's a bit of a repetition of
Wednesday night. There was maybe a first half an hour where we
had problems to start the game. After 30 minutes we got into the
game and three minutes to go they got a goal, and then of course
you know they defend for every ball in their half. You need to come
back and score and second goal - which was possible. We had to
throw everything forward and we opened ourselves up a little bit on
counter-attacks, but that was the game, basically."
on his title hopes...
"I don't know. It depends on the results of
the other teams. In my brain it's not over because
mathematically it's not over. But it is frustrating today
because I feel we had again another blatant penalty for us, that
was not given, on Fabregas. You can watch it well on television.
It's 100 per cent conclusive, but even more so we had a chance
in the last second of the game to kill the game off. I said five
games and a draw at least, basically you wanted six wins.
"
on choosing to rest players..
"When you don't win the game, you're
looking for what could have been different. We had situations where
Adebayor feels at the moment he has an ankle problem and he's a
bit tired. I felt, for example, that Hleb finished tired, Clichy
finished the game against Liverpool Wednesday night very tired. It
is difficult that you have to make decisions with the schedule we
have. If you only play the same eleven it doesn't work as
well."
on Tuesday's re-match...
"Of course it's a massive game, who would
say that the Quarter-Final of the Champions League is not? A very
important one for us, for them. Our season, I don't know, I
don't like the big sentences. We will play our game on Tuesday
night and try to win the game, and give absolutely everything, and
after, anyway, our season has not been disastrous, you know? People
expected us to be between 10th and 12th [in the league] at the
beginning of the season so we are beyond expectation."
on his view from pitchside...
"I kicked every ball, I felt there was room
there to win the game, you know? And at some stage, - we didn't
reposition quickly enough - we didn't attack the balls on the
crosses - we had two or three crosses from the left coming from
Clichy where we didn't attack the ball, and waited for the ball
so... of course if I was in there I would not score but I would try
from outside [the box]!"
Copyright 2013 The Arsenal Football Club plc. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source 5 Apr 2008