Laurent Koscielny and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain played a major role in Arsenal's stoppage-time winner at Burnley on Sunday.
Both players spoke to the media after the game to discuss the goal, the performance and closing the gap on Manchester City.
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on who scored the goal…
Alex: I think it’s hit both of us at some point but it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is we managed to squeeze that in at the end and that’s one of the biggest wins we’ll have this season, I’m sure.
Laurent: It was a hard game. We tried to score during the game, we didn’t and we stayed to push ourself to win this game and we did.
on whether it was handball…
Koscielny: I don’t know. I tried to smash the ball with my foot and after I don’t see where the ball is going so I don’t know if I touched the ball with my hand. But the ref gave to us the goal and we need to respect the decision.
on whether they wondered if the goal wouldn’t come…
Alex: Obviously, the longer the game goes on and they kept it at 0-0, it got tougher and thought for us as the game goes on. You start, I wouldn’t say panicking, but you know the outcome needs to be a goal soon and you start playing a little bit differently. We always try, no matter what, to play the same way, we tried to do that today. At the end we went a little bit more direct and in the end it paid off with the cross into the box and one of us two sneaking it in at the back post, so it was a tough game and credit to them, they defended really well. They played to their strengths and made it really hard for us but we’re delighted with the three points in the end.
on how important the win could be…
Laurent: It’s very important to keep our run, we won a lot of games and we wanted to finish before the international break with a win. We did it, so it’s important to keep out feet on the floor. We played well against Chelsea, against Basel and we need to keep this form going for the next game. It’s difficult tonight, you could see we played against Burnley and they played well, tonight the movement, the speed of the passing was a bit less and we needed to push ourselves more and more and it’s always difficult in football to win and to keep the quality of our football. We need to work but tonight we are happy with the final whistle.
on closing the gap at the top…
Alex: Yeah, of course. Obviously we heard about that result [Tottenham beating Manchester City] before the game. But we need to keep focused on us. Obviously that does us all a favour. It brings us all closer together, then the important thing was that we needed to get three points which was obviously very tough in the end. But at the end of the day, we did what we needed to do today and we need to push on after the international break now.
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