Manchester City 6-3 Arsenal
Six goals allowed by Arsenal defense which probably decided to watch the Citizens play on this afternoon game. A big loss, a big statement from City to the Premier League and a lead that is shrinking. Yes it was one of those days to forget for Arsenal…
Coach Wenger reacts to the loss:
on his assessment of the game…
It was a difficult game. We had the best defence in the Premier League and we conceded many goals today. Honestly, we could have scored at least six as well. It was for me a very open game but on our front I think we made too many mistakes. Our strengths until now was our defensive discipline and that went as the game went on. In the second half the regret I have is at 2-1 we make it 3-1, after we come back to 3-2 we make it 4-2 and always through easy mistakes. We were in a position where we could see the legs were tired a little bit and we had to run after the score. You have always more chances to lose more than to comeback because we had tired legs. In the end it was 6-3 but hurts me more is that we had an opportunity to put Man City at nine points and they are three tonight. That is very difficult to swallow because it’s a team that was not unbeatable today [Man City].
on how big a moment the defeat is in the title race…
I don’t know. We’ll see.
on whether City are the team to beat…
They are one of them the teams to beat, not more than any other one we have played until now. Maybe we have played Everton who are as good as City, we have played Southampton who are as good as City.
on Koscielny’s injury…
He has a cut and he will be out for a while but for how long I don’t know.
on whether the result would have been different with an extra day’s rest…
I don’t want to look for excuses after a defeat like that but it didn’t help. You know take any team you play Sunday afternoon, Wednesday away in the Champions League and Saturday morning away in league you are under threat. I said before the game I will not use it as an excuse and I don’t want to do it now. But it was not ideal, you could see that we were not as fresh as we should be for a big game.
www.arsenal.com
Coach Pellegrini praise his team:
“It’s very important to be an entertaining team but I would prefer we won 6-0 rather than 6-3. Every manager can think the way they want to think, maybe some managers prefer to score one and sit back but we will continue to keep trying to score goals because that’s how we want to win”.
“It’s possible to [win in attacking fashion without conceding] but the whole team must know how to defend. I will watch the game again tomorrow but I don’t remember Arsenal having that many chances to score more than three.
“Attacking, it was a very good performance, it’s not easy to score six against Arsenal – the best defence in the Premier League but I think we had four more good, clear chances to score goals, so in that sense I’m very happy but we must keep improving.”
“Fernandinho played a perfect game in all senses, not just his two goals but he recovered a lot of balls and had a lot of pace,” Pellegrini stated.
“I am very happy for him but you will see how good he is over the season – he will get better every week.
“Yaya, Samir and David all played very well today, too. The four in the midfield are very difficult to play against – the strikers can score a lot of goals with them behind them.
www.mcfc.com
