Capital One League Cup 4th round: Sheffield Wednesday 3-0 Arsenal
Coach Wenger reacts after a clear stop to the good form over the past couple weeks:
on the injuries…
The injuries are two muscular injuries and the injury damage I do not know. You have to wait 48 hours for the scans to see how big the damage is. It was a bad night at the office, we lost two players and after that we were not good enough, but on top of that you have to congratulate Sheffield Wednesday. They put in a great performance, very resolute, very dynamic and so they deserve their win tonight.
on the team selection…
I have to manage the workload of the players and at the end of the day I still think I brought too many experienced players here. We lost two players. Once I lost two players, I had Gabriel and Monreal and I did not bring them on as we could not afford to lose any more players.
on how they lost…
I think we had a lot of the ball, we just didn’t make a lot with the ball because we did not create anything. We were too short in midfield especially tonight and then it was down to not conceding anything from set-pieces [or] on on the counter-attack and unfortunately we did that because we lost balls in situations where we should not have lost the ball.
on if he is concerned by the injuries…
I’m concerned because our next game is a big game on Saturday, we have the Champions League against Bayern Munich coming up. Already we are now short. To lose two players tonight, two offensive players, is damaging for us.
on focusing on the Champions League…
Ideally I would have loved to have won tonight. I will not use that as an excuse but I’m sure as a squad now we can focus on other competitions and I must say, like I said before the game, because of many foreign players playing in the Premier League you have more and more good players playing going down to the Championship and to play with young players against Championship players becomes difficult. The level of the Championship has gone up and you see that once you have not enough of experience to deal with these types of games, you have no chance to win it.
