Arsenal’s German defender Per Mertesacker was sent off after 18 minutes for denying a goalscoring opportunity to Diego Costa, who scored the only goal five minutes later from a cross by Branislav Ivanovic.
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But it’s a moment just before the goal that was the major talking point, after the Spain worldwide went down after a challenge from Per Mertesacker.
“Costa got two of our players sent off in our last two games against Chelsea”, Wenger told reporters.
“I made the decision and for me it was quite normal”, Wenger said in response to questions about the substitution.
While Arsenal were left three points below leaders Leicester City, Chelsea put seven points between themselves and the bottom three to ease any worst-case-scenario relegation fears that their fans may be harbouring. “A fact is a fact, I do not accuse him of anything”.
“I can not comment on it because at this time I didn’t know if Costa was offside or not?” Turning at the pace of an oil tanker, Mertesacker could only stretch out a leg to fell Costa and was sent off by referee Mark Clattenburg.
Chelsea captain John Terry believes the gap can be recovered and while Hiddink thinks it is a big task, he is willing to back his captain.
“I’m very pleased with the attitude of the team”, Hiddink said.
It was put to Wenger that Costa is good at making the most of such incidents, with the Arsenal boss replying: “That is the game of the striker”.
“I would not compare today’s situation”, Wenger said.
“The team were focused and resilient, fighting to the last second”.
“Bellerin is a full-back who likes to get forward and when Mertesacker gets exposed, he doesn’t have the pace to deal with it”.
Terry insisted that reaching the top four to qualify for next season’s Champions League was still not out of the question despite a 14-point gap with fourth-placed Tottenham Hotspur.
“I would like to see the image and then I give a fair judgement but what I saw was he was tripped. But if my captain says it, we follow our captain”.
“I haven’t seen the repetition so far but I don’t want to go into a personal game but I had some doubts about the Fabregas penalty yes or no but I can understand why the referee did not give a penalty, fair enough”.
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Costa was withdrawn in the second half with a knee problem, but Hiddink did not know the extent of the injury.
