Gatting on defeat and experience

Steve Gatting spoke after Arsenal’s Youth League last-16 defeat at Atletico Madrid. You can read a full transcript below:

on conceding an early goal…
We had quite a young team and some of the younger lads started a bit nervously. We gave them a bit of a leg up with a sloppy goal that was caused by lots of little mistakes. When we look back at it later on, we’ll think, ‘how did it happen?’, but it did. They then sat back and we weren’t quite good enough to equalise.

on Atletico Madrid’s defending…
We dominated possession. Credit to them, they defended very well. The thing that you get in international football is time-wasting from 45 minutes onwards. They time-wasted well, they gave lots of little fouls away when they needed to, and then we couldn’t quite capitalise on the half-chances that we had. The final-third ball and some of the crosses we put in couldn’t quite pick players out and that’s the difference between winning and losing. I said in the changing room, ‘you’re in the last 16 of the Youth League, margins are small’.

on whether being caught by early goals has been frustrating…
We’ve prepared the same way, you send the boys out and we always talk about a fast start. I guess it’s one of those things.

on the learning experience of playing in Youth League…
It’s a big learning experience. We wanted to win, obviously it didn’t happen, but the boys are playing European football which is a little bit different to English football and they found out tonight how hard it can be.

on what he said to them after the game…
We told them they performed well and that the margins were small. We dominated the game, dominated possession, ended up losing and we’re very disappointed. Hopefully we’ll come away from Madrid with better experience for next time.