Arsenal drops to 3rd after Chelsea loss
Print Edition
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger dismissed suggestions that his side has a mental block regarding London rival Chelsea following a 0-1 home defeat that carried an air of deja vu.
Arsenal was bidding to return to the top of the Premier League table in Sunday’s game, but it was left in third place after Per Mertesacker was sent off and Diego Costa scored to give Chelsea a clinical 1-0 victory.
Arsenal has not beaten Chelsea in nine league games but Wenger said that Mertesacker’s 18th-minute dismissal, for a last-man foul on Costa, meant it was impossible to compare the game with previous fixtures.
“I think today (Sunday) was a special game. We played with 10 men, we were 1-0 down straight away. Normally you lose a game like that 3-0 or 4-0,” he told reporters.
“When you have to chase the game, (there’s) nothing more dangerous than being down to 10 men. Overall we come out with a lot of regret because we feel we couldn’t play with our team.
“And looking at Chelsea today, I think there was a lot of room to beat them if we had played with 11 players.”
“He (Costa) has got two (Arsenal) players sent off this season.”
Wenger reacted to Mertesacker’s dismissal by sending Gabriel on for striker Olivier Giroud, which drew a chorus of boos from the home supporters.
But he was unrepentant, saying: “Do you want to make a poll for every decision to see who does what? I make the decision and for me it was a normal decision. We had to go for long distances and we needed pace to go from one goal to the other. We knew we had to drop deeper and use pace to get forward.”
Everton lost 1-2 to Swansea in Sunday’s other game.
In Spain, Real Madrid dropped its first points under coach Zinedine Zidane after a 1-1 draw at Real Betis, while Atletico Madrid failed to regain the Spanish league lead from Barcelona after finishing goalless against 10-man Sevilla.
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