Wenger on victory, Giroud and momentum

Arsene Wenger faced the media after Arsenal’s 2-1 win against Newcastle United at St James’ Park on Saturday. You can read a full transcript of the press conference below:

on the win…
We have played four games in two weeks and three away games at Manchester, in Monaco and here today, and we’ve won all three. The last 40 minutes were difficult because our legs had gone a little bit and Newcastle played very well in the second half, but we had an outstanding second half going forward. We had a fluent game by creating chance after chance and in the second half we just had to show different qualities and hang on.

on Olivier Giroud…
He scores the goals, he fights hard and keeps the ball up front. He had a good game again today.

on catching Chelsea…
Chelsea have a good security and at the moment I feel they have enough to be quite serene. We have Manchester City in front of us but if you look behind us it is tight as well, so the important thing is to win our games. Chelsea have too much security.

on finishing second and winning the FA Cup…
At the moment we are not concluding anything. We are in the fight. You have seen the game today - in every game we need to turn up and fight until the last minute to get the points and that’s what we have to do. We just have to go for the next game and win it.

on going unbeaten for the rest of the season…
I don’t change my mind on what I just said to you. Nobody can predict that. What we try to do is to win the next game and then after that, the other one. Now we have an international break where everybody goes on international duty. Let’s hope everybody comes back fit because you could see that a few players were tired today.

on whether the players believe they can win the league…
The players want to do as well as they can. We know we have a fight first to be in the top four. We go step by step, game by game.