Arsenal and Manchester City had to settle for 1-1 draw and could not benefit from Chelsea’s defeat at Crystal Palace 1-0. Silva ignited the game in the first half but Flamini responded for Arsenal to avoid another defeat
Arsenal 1-1 Manchester City
Arsenal coach Wenger reacts:
on whether it was a fair result…
Maybe, yes. We were a bit nervy at the start, insecure in our attitude by our last two results. But even when we were 1-0 down you could see the team was ready for a fight and we controlled the second half – we controlled the first 20 minutes. Overall in the first half maybe they had another chance, in the second half we had a second chance. We could have won it in the second half but overall it was a game of quality between two good teams and the game was played with a great spirit on both sides.
on the second-half performance…
They have played some good performances. With what happened last week of course if you read the newspapers you can’t believe that, but if you look at our results since the start of the season, we are in the semi-final of the FA Cup. We knocked out Tottenham, Liverpool and Everton, we lost against Bayern with 10 men and played a 1-1 [in Germany]. You don’t do that if you’re terrible and with the players we have out and what we have shown today, I think it’s remarkable. I would like to see Toure, Silva and Kompany at home today and play the same game again. I think the team has been remarkably consistent, we have gone through a nightmare last week. Of course you could see with the 2-2 against Swansea that the team was on the floor and hugely disappointed because we conceded an own goal in the last minute. Despite that, we responded very well here.
on where it leaves title challenge…
What happens at Chelsea doesn’t help us because it does not give us more points here. It just shows that we have absolutely to fight until the end of the season because everybody can beat everybody. Chelsea lost today at Crystal Palace, so that means all of us have to be careful and consistent. Mathematically we are still in there but it is not in our hands. That means you cannot say it is just depending on us and it is not realistic maybe to say that today. We have t0 look above us and behind us as well, because behind us they are coming as well.
City coach Pellegrini:
“It’s a good point because we played two games away this week against United and Arsenal. They are two big teams, so it’s not bad but I also feel we could have been more lucky today.
“We played better in the first half than the second and had at least four or five clear chances to cross but we didn’t finish well. But football is like that and I think our team deserved to win but we just drew.
“When it was 1-1 they grew and played better because of the goal and because they’re a good team here at home. Still, I thought we controlled the last 15 minutes of the game and we had some clear chances but we didn’t score.”
The most important thing is that we depend on ourselves until the end of the season. I see it exactly the way I saw it at the beginning of the season – I said it would be a close league with three or four teams fighting for the title.
“It was not a chance to go top because we could have won today and then Liverpool could have won tomorrow and gone top. They were two points ahead of us going into the game, now just one. Arsenal still have a chance to fight for the title – we’ll see which team does things better from now until the end.”
