Arsenal at one point found themselves 4-1 down on home turf to Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, who blew the Gunners away with a 20 minute blast of superb football.
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“Some players who came back late were physically short”, Wenger said. The Gunners had some weaker players starting, and Liverpool maybe performed slightly worse because of that, but we managed to get the win despite feeling the pressure in moments. “It’s a situation where you can only be punished”.
When it was put to Wenger that he can’t afford to wait until the end of August to be ready and fans would expect them to be ready for the opening day of the season, he said: “I agree with you”.
Arsene Wenger says there is no need to hit the panic button after Arsenal lost against Liverpool in their first game of the new Premier League season.
Liverpool took a 4-1 lead in the second half and the Liverpool manager celebrated Sadio Mane’s fourth goal by giving the debutant a piggyback – but Arsenal pulled two goals back to set up a tense finish.
Wenger’s decision to start the 25-year-old in a rough-and-tumble encounter between Arsenal and Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool was always a risk, and the hamstring injury Ramsey picked up was another negative element to yesterday’s defeat.
Klopp continued: “We were much better in the last 15 mins [of first half], then the wonderful goal of Phil”.
“It was the wrong sign for all of us because it felt for everybody in this moment like “that’s it” but then you look at the watch and you see “oh there’s still half an hour to go, that’s not too good”.”
“It’s hard but it’s the Premier League and nothing should be easy in this league so we need to be ready”, he concluded.
“We came out firing in the second half and got some brilliant goals”. But they responded in fine style as Philippe Coutinho netted twice either side of an Adam Lallana strike, and Sadio Mane also got on the scoresheet. Over the whole of the 90 minutes it was a deserved win.
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“That’s part of it and of course that’s not pleasant but we have shown in the past we have the mental strength to deal with that and bounce back”.
