What did you make of that?
Difficult to explain because this is football, not basketball. Because any other sport you win the game very comfortably and you’re talking about different things. Difficult to explain but at the end of the day it’s decided in the boxes. They scored one goal, we didn’t. For the amount of time that we spent around the box it shows that we have a situation, we didn’t put them in the goal. Because they have an exceptional goalkeeper today and because we didn’t have enough quality and enough capacity to break them down when we had the numbers and the situations open to do so.
How big a missed opportunity does it feel like considering the Spurs result today?
Huge. If you’re somebody who doesn’t know the result and was watching the game, you know what they would tell you - that Arsenal won the game. And we didn’t. It’s very disappointing and difficult to explain with words but this is sport, it’s what makes it different to any other. In basketball you have 25 shots, the opponent has one and you win ten out of ten times.
It was another game where you had the chances but you couldn’t take them. Is that what separates you from the top sides at the moment?
It’s what we have. The players that we have haven’t done it in this league. When you have world class players who have done it in the league for ten years, I would probably say that. I am the first one to defend them, to support them, you see how they try. The only way to do it is to insist and what happened today might happen the next day or the next month.
How are you going to change things?
Well something clicks and instead of the ball hitting the post - like it did twice last week and hit the goalkeeper and gets deflected and goes outside - [instead] it goes in. This is very difficult to predict, because to create more - I can’t remember a game where Arsenal has played with this team, where they have created and dominated in a game more and better. But the result is what at the end we need to be where we have to be, and if we are not able to do that we aren’t not going to be there - it’s as simple as that. Because you don’t have enough quality to be there, because we have to win football matches and we have to score more goals, and that’s a problem we have at the moment.
How do the players feel?
They are really down today, and they are down because they cannot find the right answer apart from what we can do better around the box, and not to win the match. That’s the frustration - when somebody is better than you you shake their hands and you have to do something, you have to believe yourself you have to be critical of yourself. But when it’s happening the way it happened - apart from 25 minutes against Palace, and some period against Brighton in the first half - it’s very difficult to explain, and accept.
Will Lacazette be back against Chelsea?
It will depend on whether he’s negative, his symptoms are clear and whether he’s ready to play.
