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'We've had an absolutely horrible week'

Arsene Wenger could not hide his frustration on Sunday after we let a lead slip for the second time in five days.

In his press conference the boss was asked about recent form, Petr Cech’s last-minute intervention and the injury to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. Here’s what he said:

on losing a lead twice in a row…
First of all, we’ve played many games. We’ve played four games away from home out of the last five. We had one day less recovery at Everton than everybody else. We played in Basel, we played against Stoke on Saturday, then we played at Everton on Tuesday night. I feel there are plenty of big teams who don’t play in Europe who could have played on Tuesday, and we could have played on Wednesday. I think it’s a bit the accumulation of games we’ve played recently, particularly away from home.

on why he was upset with Cech at the end…
I was upset because I don’t see with 20 seconds to go why you would play a short free-kick when you could get the ball in the box. The referee took advantage of stopping the game on the first short pass, but he would have let the ball be played into the box. Why should we need to make a short pass? We know there’s a risk there that the referee takes advantage of it.

on what’s wrong with the Ox…
He’s injured. It looks like a hamstring - it’s a muscular problem.

on if we can bridge a nine-point gap…
We have to come back next week and win our game. I think we’ve had an absolutely horrible week and what is worse is that out of two good performances, you get zero points. And out of two leading positions, we lost two games. That of course is very disappointing. Before we think about the nine points, we have to come back and be realistic. For a while we have not kept a clean sheet, and if you want to play at the top you have to keep clean sheets.