on the performance…
I felt if we scored a second goal maybe we could give a psychological blow to Everton. We had a brilliant start and slowly Everton got back into the game after 30 minutes. In the second half, for the most we did hang on until the last 15 minutes when we started to create chances again. But it was all Everton [until then]. We were resilient, focused and with a great desire to defend. Our defence played very well tonight. I felt it was a bit psychological - we refused to play because we just wanted to keep the score. Credit to Everton they played very well in the second half.
on the team's resilience…
We showed a side of us that usually people don't know. It was the only way to get a result tonight. It was good to know that we can do that as well. We didn't panic, we did well on crosses which is usually not our strong point. We didn't panic and that is good for us.
on moving into third place…
We have learned in the last [few] months. For example we have taken six points in Liverpool in two weeks and it was 180 minutes of intense fighting. We want to keep going. We must keep our humility and focus and fight for each other. That is what we had to do here.
on how far the team has come…
I was always optimistic, because if you look at our results from October onwards we only had one bad spell when we lost three times on the trot because we had no full backs. The attitude of the team was always good, so I felt we could bounce back. We needed to be strong because we were under a lot of pressure and we will need that until the end of the season. Where we come from, we know what suffering means because in some press conferences I had to answer 'are you playing not to go down'. We know we have a difficult battle in front of us.
Source: Arsenal.com on 21 Mar 12
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