Wenger: Arsenal belief strong after Man City win

Arsenal played a more cagey, containing game for large parts of the match against City, in contrasting to their more ususal flowing attacking style – and it paid off.

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger hailed his side’s spirit after last night’s 2-1 victory over Manchester City at the Emirates Stadium.

Bild write that the “firecracker” of a match between Arsenal and City showed Ozil “in absolute top form”.

“The first shot Arsenal had at our goal was on 33 minutes”. We have not to speculate too much on any weakness of Southampton.

The Chilean said: “I think it’s very important to be involved, as we are now, at the end of January. But we need to communicate a bit more, to focus a bit more and to stick together as team a bit more and I think it will be okay”.

“It looks like it is linked with a trend that possession is not rewarded any more like it was before”, said Wenger.

Toure’s goal sparked a late resurgence from Manuel Pellegrini’s side, but they could not find a leveller, meaning City have now not won away in the league since September and have lost three of their last five on the road.

The Frenchman had little goal to aim at but fired his left footed effort low beneath England keeper Joe Hart for his 10th league goal of the season. “You realize you earn your right to win these games and for us it is important that we realize that we have to be ready to fight like that in every single game. We did a great job to win against a great opponent”. “That is our thoughts and that is why we implement them into games sometimes but we are still unsafe on the counterattack and that makes us a real threat. It is the same players available.” .

“That is what we are doing really well at the minute but that means a lot of concentration and work in training and everyone in the game is up for the challenge”.

City face struggling Sunderland on Boxing Day before travelling to table-topping Leicester on December 29. Speaking about the busy festive period, Mertesacker said: “We need to find solutions”. Everything isn’t going as smoothly as we would like it to.