The win has moved Arsenal into third place in the Premier League table.
Advertisement
Xhaka was surprisingly dropped to the bench for Arsenal’s last two games – the Premier League win over Southampton and Champions League draw at Paris Saint-Germain – despite impressive performances in his previous two starts.
“I felt that we played the last 20 minutes without too much goal to score”, he said. When you play 11 against 10, it is of course not the same mentally and psychologically but we remained serious and in the end we won the game in a convincing way. It was a good result in a very hard away game, and it seems to have given them confidence going into the weekend.
Hull have impressed so far this season, securing seven points from four games despite the hard circumstances they have been working in.
Sanchez stepped up to take the resulting spot kick but saw his low shot toward the bottom left-hand corner tipped away by Jakupovic.
Arsenal went back on the attack and the ever-lively Walcott crossed for Francis Coquelin, whose shot was blocked by the hand of Livermore in the box for a straight red card.
Livermore was sent off for deliberate handball shortly before half-time, only for Sanchez to miss the ensuing penalty.
“You could tell during the week how well we fought to get a point at PSG”. Today we showed that even when a team comes back at us we have the character to finish it off.
“It was a good three points”, the defensive midfielder said. We’ve been in this situation before but we need to make sure that the next step now is Tuesday’s match.
“I have time now to sit down with family, have a chat and take it forward”.
“I would have liked to have got it done weeks ago but it’s only in this last 24 hours we’ve ended up in this state of affairs”, added Phelan.
“He can break the lines with a pass and individually as well, so there’s a lot in the locker”.
Advertisement
Wenger said: “It’s only his second game since he came back from injury but today he had more presence in the game, more confidence when he takes the ball and he can be very unsafe going forward”.
