Arsene Wenger faced the media after Arsenal’s 1-0 win against Newcastle United at St James’ Park on Saturday. You can read a full transcript of his press conference below:
on whether patience was key…
Patience and nerves. I believe that we needed to not rush our game, to wait for our chances and to take one of them. I must say that Newcastle decided from the start to make the game quite physical and we had to keep our nerves and not become a little bit aggressive as well. I thought we did that well. Afterwards it was a strange game. You play away from home, 11 against 10, and you know that they will play 15 yards deeper, you play 10 against nine in the final third, the crowd is behind their team which puts pressure on the referee, and then it’s very difficult. We didn’t find the space. They defended well and they’ve shown why they didn’t concede at Manchester United as well. We are happy to have the three points and to win 1-0.
on Aleksandar Mitrovic’s red card…
Honestly during the game I didn’t see. Just seeing the game on television, unfortunately it was a red card. He didn’t play the ball at all.
on whether Arsenal got enough protection from the referee…
I don’t know. I think the referee did alright but Newcastle wanted to stop us from playing, from moving the ball quickly and to stop our game. They tried that from the start on. Mitrovic went a bit overboard maybe, and maybe a bit unlucky. Did he do it on purpose or not? I don’t know.
on transfers…
We are open and we are in the transfer market. If we find an exceptional player in any sector, we will do it. At the moment I don’t know if something will happen or not.
on whether it was a perfect away performance…
It was important. We know we’ll turn it round at home so it was important mathematically not to drop points today, not to be too far from the top teams. It was important mentally as well because we dropped points at home. We had two different away games at Newcastle and Crystal Palace but we’ve got six points. That is very good.
on whether the red card changed his game plan…
Yes. I expected more space for Theo Walcott. At the start it looked quite promising but after 15 minutes it was a different problem for us. There was no space behind their defenders, the service through their lines was very difficult and they defended very well.
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