'You accept the problems you face and solve them'

Arsene Wenger freely admits he would have preferred not to have played the first leg of our Europa League quarter-final at home - but is happy to "accept the problem".

We host CSKA Moscow at Emirates Stadium on Thursday night, and the Arsenal manager told the media how that would affect the dynamic of the tie.

 

This is what he said in the pre-match press conference:

 

on whether he’d rather have the tie the other way around...

Ideally yes, but then again if you want to do well in Europe you don’t choose, you accept the problems you face and you sort them out and you solve them. That’s down to the quality teams and nobody always has the ideal way. If you want to go far you have to accept at some stage that you have to play first at home and then away.

 

on if CSKA have a chance to win…

Before the game, both teams have a chance to win, of course. They are as strong side. They went to Lyon and they won. I watched the game they played in Lyon - they played extremely well. They created many chances and for me it’s a 50/50.

 

on whether scoring lots of goals means the tie could be over tomorrow…

No. We played these two games we speak about [against Ostersunds and Milan] away from home first. We had a clear attitude, to try to win the game, and it went well. Tomorrow we will try to repeat the same kind of performance, but we’re playing against a team who has done well in Europe as well. We certainly need a top-class performance. What we want to focus on is just on the quality of our performance.

 

on if there’s more confidence now after four wins in a row…

We were disappointed with our results against Manchester City and it always takes a bit of time to grieve and recover. The mentality in the team is very good, very strong and very healthy as well. We recovered. You judge a team and the quality of a team on the way they come out of a crisis. On that front, I believe it’s very positive on our side.