On whether he was disappointed with the performance…
I am, and the players are as well. We had a lot of the ball but didn’t make a lot of it and Ipswich defended with heart, intelligence and gave us problems on the counter attack. They have shown that you can have 70 per cent of the ball and lose games. You have to give a lot of credit to Ipswich, they defended well. We were not sharp, not creative and looked vulnerable defensively.
On whether Arsenal were complacent…
I don’t think so, I think we had an off night. You could see from the start, every single pass was a problem. We rely a lot on our sharp, crisp passing and that was always a problem tonight.
On whether Ipswich deserved to win…
Ipswich won, you have to congratulate them. They did fight for their win, you can say that.
On how his team defended…
As a team we didn’t have the wanted performance tonight. I would say in every department we were below our usual level. It would be unfair to only put the blame on the defenders tonight because I believe in every single department we were not at our usual level.
On Ipswich’s long balls…
When you play in one half, the long ball has 50 yards to be dangerous. I felt we got more and more problems as the game went on. We looked in control in the first half but in the second half we looked much more vulnerable defensively, I put that down to fatigue.
On whether his side can turn it around in the second leg…
I believe we will turn it around but we got a good warning tonight that we have to produce a different performance.
On the defensive situation…
We lost the game tonight because we didn’t play as well as we can, that will be the main lesson. At the moment we have only two central defenders, but that doesn’t explain our defending tonight.
On speculation regarding Matthew Upson…
I do not want to speak about one particular name.
On his plans for getting a defender in…
I am disappointed by our defeat tonight. It’s very early to say definitely that we will get somebody. What is important for us is that we play now nine games in January and you can have sometimes a game where you are not as sharp as you would like to be. It is important that we focus on our next game.
Source: Arsenal.com on 12 Jan 11
No comments:
Post a Comment