A crestfallen Arsene Wenger admits Arsenal’s 1-1 draw with Atletico Madrid was the ‘worst possible result’ after his side squandered enough chances to put themselves within touching distance of the Europa League final before Antoine Griezmann grabbed a late equaliser for the visitors.
Diego Simeone’s side was on the back foot for almost the entire game after defender Sime Vrsaljko was sent off for two yellow cards inside the first ten minutes. Despite Alexandre Lacazette breaking the deadlock just after the hour mark the visitors, courtesy of some fine keeping by Jan Oblak, weathered the storm and hit back on the break with just eight minutes remaining.
Arsenal travel to the Wanda Metropolitano in a week’s time knowing they must score against one of Spain’s grisliest defences. Speaking after his final ever European game at the Emirates, Wenger couldn’t hide his disappointment.
“Looking at the performance we had and the way the game went it was the worst possible result,” he told BT Sport.
“We have to go there in a positive mood and qualify over there. We have to recover from a disappointment and prepare for the next one.
“It felt like an opportunity missed. We could already be qualified but it didn’t happen. Their goalkeeper made many saves and you could see that they have the quality up front to take advantage
“We knew if we did not score the second one it was important we did not concede.”
Arsenal will likely rotate heavily for Sunday’s match with Manchester United before they try and seal a memorable result in the Spanish capital. For all tonight’s frustration, Wenger insists that his players still have what it takes to make the final in Lyon even though the stats add up in Atletico’s favour.
“You don’t look at the statistics, you look at your performance and we know we can score anywhere,” he added.
“First recover, because the players have given a lot, and then see what we can do over there.
“We have to go there with absolute belief to do it.”
Parting gift
Love – Koscienly 🙁
Wow this must be why he is called the professor!
Wenger out!
Clearly no-one else uses tongue in cheek humour as a coping mechanism then 😐
Maybe it’s too soon after the event to appreciate such ironic humour…
I think I’ve run out of ways to keep myself sane *sigh*
Ironic or lazy boring humour?
All Koscielny had to do was kick the ball into orbit. But no, had to try some fancy flick
Fuck just fuck
Before the game if you had offered me a 1-1 I’d probably would have taken it.
Were it an away game, sure.
Lots of doom and gloom around here, but don’t worry folks, if it doesn’t work out the team will have another opportunity to win this competition next year.
Daaaym! Whatte positivity even in the UNLIKELY scenario of us NOT winning the European Carling/Mickey-Mouse Cup this year itself. You be the shiz Shitbird! _/\_
Hate that Simeone goal celebration and the Atleti players dropping like flies. We’re the Arsenal and we’ll go there and rip them apart.
You must be mistaking this team of spineless gimps for some other team.
Might be your spineless team but they’re my Arsenal….
You have already won at life itself Hairy for this “they’re my Arsenal” bit. _/\_
They aren’t spineless, wash your mouth out!
So you don’t disagree that they’re gimps?
Realistically, no we will not.
I can’t agree that we will, but not because I don’t believe that we will, just because if I say that we will…we won’t!
That ref was absolutely awful. About the only decisions he got right were the 2 yellow cards to send off the Madrid player. How many times did Ramsey and other Arsenal players have obvious fouls ignored on them. Every time a Madrid player dove, then the foul was called. Absolutely terrible to watch. Having said that, we need to put some more players in the box when crossing. We had way too many pointless passes as well. Just attack as fast as possible instead of walking the ball up the pitch. That Madrid team was ripe for the picking…we should… Read more »
Arsenal dominating possession but hardly taking advantage of it.
I wonder whose fault is that.
Yours
Red-Sky out ?
How very typically arsenal. Hardly troubled all night and then gift them a goal. Nice guilt complex for kos as the man possibly at fault for aw leaving with no el
It must be said we have far superior goal celebrations
Next-up Mou’s Man United. Not a right time by any means 🙁
“We have to recover from a disappointment and prepare for the next one”
– believe Arsene, believe!!
“Wenger: it’s the worst possible result”
What kind of talk is this from our “leader”? While they’s only one goal in it we still have every chance of going through.
Sadly, I’m old enough to remember when we played Juventus in another European semi-final back in 1980. We also drew the first leg 1-1 at home. And we were also written off. But you known what? We went to Italy and won 1-0.
Athletico are defensively strong, but the don’t score too many either. If we get the first goal then things will be very interesting.
Who are you and what have you done to Fatgooner?
In seriousness, I agree. The tie is finely poised. We get an early goal and everything looks different. If we defend well, we’ll beat them. It’s a big if.
You’ve taken that quote out of context. I believe he meant the worst possible result considering how we played.
“Looking at the performance we had and the way the game went it was the worst possible result,”
Something seriously strange is going on. This can’t be Fatgooner,like someone said in a previous tread, imposter!
Feel sorry for Wenger..What more could he do..Koscielny fucked us..Usually im with the lose together win together teams stuff but he let everyone down with that.
Problem is we can concede anywhere too…
Hmmm. I’d have thought a 1-5 would be the worst possible result but what do i know?
It’s far from over yet & I can’t even get angry any more. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not fair to expect top level defending out of players that aren’t simply aren’t capable of achieving it. The atmosphere out there will probably make us shit our pants within the first 20 minutes, but providing we wear nappies and Özil and Lacazette play like they can, then we can get goals. Records are there to be broken after all. Come on Arsenal! A nice score draw will do it.
Excuse my double aren’t!… I was getting flashbacks of Mustafi skidding on his fucking arse when I was typing…
I dunno…could be worse. Could have let in 2 goals or more had the ref not done us a favour early on. I had a feeling we would get a draw before the match. AND we would let in an away goal for them. Still, need to go into second leg with some belief we can get a good result. The encouraging thing is we were all over them before they were reduced to 10. In fact when they were short one, they actually became more difficult to play against as they bunkered down and went compact. The result is… Read more »
The ref did us no favor!
To tell you the truth I didn’t expect us to make it easy for ourselves even after the red card. I have always felt that if we must get to the final, we will do it the hard way. ‘Hardway’ = Arsenal way.
it’s 1-1, I can think of much worse results like i dunno.. 2-1