FA Cup Quarterfinals: Arsenal 1-2 Watford
Arsenal gave up the FA Cup, a trophy they had won for the past two years. It seems as history repeats again that the Gunners fall into crisis and play a bad football toward the end of the season. The Premier League title is almost impossible with 8 points behind the leaders Leicester and the Champions League against FC Barcelona is (almost) a sure elimination. So what is left for Arsenal and his fans…? The response is simple: Nothing.
Here is what Arsene Wenger has to say after the home loss (the second straight after Swansea).
Our long, long run has come to an end in a very sad way because I don’t think that we deserved to lose. We have to look at ourselves for the first goal. The second goal was a fantastic shot. I felt that it was a real cup game where they defended very well and took their chances on the break, the few chances they had. As long as we didn’t score the first goal they kept their belief. They were physically very strong but we had enough chances to win the game.
on whether their physical strength had an impact on the result…
We knew that before the game. We had enough technical superiority to win the game and to score goals. It was down to not making a mistake and keeping it 0-0 until the last 20 minutes. If we would have done that then we might have won the game. Unfortunately we made one. It is sad. We’ve come out of a very long run in the FA Cup. The FA Cup is the FA Cup, you cannot guarantee you will win it.
on how disappointing it is to be out of the FA Cup…
When we’re in it you [the media] say it’s only the FA Cup. You cannot say that it’s a disaster on the other end of the scale.
A statement like the one above is quite enraging if you think Arsenal will likely bring no trophy this year…
This had nothing to do with confidence. Of course there is confidence in the team. The recent results haven’t shown that but we’ve played against good teams and the recent results were 2-2 at Tottenham with 10 men and a 4-0 win at Hull. I don’t see why we shouldn’t have any confidence.
I don’t think we suffered a lot defensively. Watford are a team who are good on the break. They depend on Ighalo and Deeney and they are a handful to cope with. They were good and the rest work very hard. Overall we didn’t give many chances away in that game.
