‘Our first goal was thanks to Bernd’

We steamed into an early two-goal lead against Southampton on Sunday - but it could have all gone so differently if it wasn’t for Bernd Leno. 

Our goalkeeper made a crucial stop at 0-0 to keep out Nathan Redmond, allowing us to counter-attack and score when Alex Lacazette turned in Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s low strike. 

The Armenia international then netted just 11 minutes later and after we sealed the win, he spoke to the media to discuss Leno’s performance, his combination with Lacazette and more. 

This is what he said:

on the game…

We had a great first half. I think if it wasn’t for Bernd Leno’s save, we wouldn’t have scored the first goal so that’s thanks to him. He did half of the job. In the second half, it was a bit different because they came into the game more, but we had a bit more spaces for counter-attacking and could have scored more goals. Unfortunately we didn’t. 

on linking up with Alex Lacazette…

I didn’t just enjoy linking up with Laca, I enjoyed linking up with everyone. I think the connection was great between the players and we were unlucky to only score two goals because we had three or four more chances to score. But that’s football and we’ll keep going. 

on whether he’s disappointed to have not scored more…

Sure because it doesn’t matter if we’d already scored two, we wanted to score more. It’s part of the football. We wanted to make our fans happier but today we could only score two goals. 

on fluid attacking performances being key…

Of course we needed it. It’s an important three points and now we have to be focused against Bournemoutb on Wednesday. That’s going to be a tough game so we have to be ready for it. We’re still in the race and we’re going to fight until the end. 

on Lacazette scoring in four consecutive home Premier League games…

We’re very happy for him and we’re going to do everything we can to help him score the fifth one.