Mikel Arteta was clearly hugely disappointed at the final whistle of our 2-0 defeat to Liverpool on Thursday night.
But the boss was proud of the effort put in by his players, some of whom hadn't trained since returning from injury and illness.
"I think the performance shows the level of commitment that the players have and the way we competed against this team for many, many minutes," the boss said. "But after that you need the result and the result is not what we wanted."
He added that the result was even harder to take, considering the hard work the side put in last week at Anfield, to keep the tie scoreless coming into our home leg.
"The first leg and all the hard work that all the players put in to be able to be there. As you know we had many of them who hadn't had any training sessions, but they wanted to be there and help the team, and to be fair I'm extremely proud of them.
"We wanted to give [our fans] that possibility to travel with us to Wembley and try to lift that trophy. Unfortunately, today that didn't happen."
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