2017 Emirates FA Cup semifinals: Arsenal- Manchester City / Chelsea-Tottenham
Four powerhouses and two exciting games will decide on the 2017 FA Cup finalists.
Arsenal coach Wenger reacts on the bounce-back win:
“I felt we played in the first half with the desire not to make a mistake. But after we scored the first goal I felt we wanted to heighten the tempo in the second half. You could see they worked very hard to stop us from playing in the first half and they certainly paid for that in the second half.
We were a bit nervous because your confidence drops when you don’t have the results. The team was unjustifiably criticized for our last game against Bayern Munich because we had an outstanding game. The game was killed not by the fault of the players but we have to take a distance with us and have a look at a bigger perspective than people want to do. Overall we had to respond today and that’s what we did. We had an outstanding game against Bayern Munich but our game was killed by the referee. I watched this game three times now and it’s still the referee who killed our game.
I didn’t want to gamble today because I knew that it was very important to win the game and I felt as well that the team had performed well against Bayern and I wanted to give them a chance to find their confidence back by winning the next game. That’s why I maintained 90 per cent of the players in the starting line-up. They have been hit very hard after the game [against Bayern] and that is always dangerous because your confidence can go very quickly.
We were punished very hard on Tuesday night, after what I think was a good performance as long as we were 11 against 11. We were really frustrated after the game and it’s good to get that out of the system.”
