Arsene Wenger : Both the Man City goals were offside

12/19/2016

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has questioned the validity of both the goals Manchester City scored in the 2nd half of their clash on Sunday to secure a 2-1 win at the Etihad Stadium. The Frenchman has also rued the fact that they have lost two matches in a row after taking the lead in both of them.

Arsenal took the lead against Man City through Theo Walcott in an excellent first-half display, but the visitors were completely outplayed in the second half by Pep Guardiola’s men. City came back from 0-1 down to win the match 2-1 with Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling scoring the goals, but Arsene Wenger felt that both of those goals should have been ruled out.

"I feel we dropped physically in the second half. In the first half we looked always dangerous and sharp and on top of that the decisions went against us.

"The two goals are two offside goals and in a game of that stature I feel enough is enough for us. We got some bad decisions for the whole season and today I looked at the goals and both are offside.

"The second one is five yards offside. The first one is still offside. But what can I do? We have to live with that. We have to look at ourselves and analyse why we lost the game," Wenger told Sky Sports.

It was Arsenal’s second defeat in a row after they lost to Everton on Tuesday night. Against Everton also, Arsenal were leading 0-1 before conceding two goals and dropping points.

"It's a shame because in the two games we were 1-0 up and we lost the two games 2-1. But we were quite in control and in the second half we suffered after their first goal for 20-25 minutes," he added.

"Afterwards we came back into the game but they managed well to gain time, with a lot of experience, it was difficult to get in the flow.

"Same result-wise but it was not exactly the same pattern. On Tuesday night we conceded two goals from headers. It's difficult as well because we've played four games out of five away from home, with a very short recovery from Saturday to Tuesday after we played away to Basel, you could see today physically the second half was a bit more difficult," Wenger added.

With the loss, Arsenal are now nine points behind the league leaders Chelsea and their title hopes are disappearing fast. However, Wenger has refused to blame this mini-collapse on the lack of mental fortitude in the team. He said, "No. They didn't create many chances, it's more physical I think, because we dropped a little physically in the second half, you could see when we won the ball we didn't come out quickly enough anymore and that allowed them to press us more and win balls back and we lost many more balls than in the first half.

"It's a horrible week but it's part of the season as well. Unfortunately what is horrible is on the schedule we knew it was a difficult week because we had the Champions League game before that but we were controlling both games and that's difficult. But the mentality is strong and we have to respond now."

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