And the Frenchman was delighted with the never-die-attitude showed by his players.
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Labelling the penalty decision as “harsh”, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said: “It was a pivotal moment today… but here’s a long way to go, we play a lot of big teams”.
Leicester could have opened up an eight-point lead on Arsenal with victory at the Emirates Stadium and they took the lead through a first-half Jamie Vardy penalty.
Welbeck suffered an injury last season in April 2015 and came back to action from the bench in the 82nd minute, after 10 months away from first-team football.
Welbeck was brought on by Wenger in the 83rd minute as the Gunners desperately searched for the victor to close the gap on Claudio Ranieri’s side and the Englishman obliged by nodding home Mesut Ozil’s free-kick in the last minute of injury time.
“I don’t think they played really well, it wasn’t a great Arsenal performance, they didn’t look like champions but they won the important one”.
The result sees us climb up to second place in the table and to within two points of Leicester so it’s easy to understand why the players have been in buoyant mood after the game. “That is a great change”, he told Sky Sports.
“We’re the type of team to fight for each other, have each other’s backs and do what’s necessary to try to help each other out”.
“We have only lost three games this season so we will not get bogged down by this in the same way we do not get too ahead of ourselves if we win”.
“Also sometimes the referee stopped the time at 94 (minutes), four minutes’ extra time, but there was five minutes extra time when they scored”.
“It was a mental test for us”, Wenger was quoted as saying by the Premier League’s website on Sunday. “It has been a rollercoaster for me, a hard moment, and my family and friends know what I have been through”. We managed to break them down and create chances. We didn’t see that coming.
“We needed [the win], if you want to challenge for anything in this league you need to win”.
“We had so many half chances where we could have scored more”.
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Arsenal are third in the Premier League behind Tottenham Hotspur on goal difference and face potentially decisive fixtures over the next few weeks.
