Arsene Wenger

Arsène Wenger faced the media after Arsenal’s 2-1 defeat against Swansea City at Emirates Stadium on Wednesday. Here is the full transcript of his press conference, in which he also discloses injury concerns as they affect Petr Cech and defender Koscielny. :

on the result…
It was a very unlucky defeat because we created many chances, we were unlucky in our finishing and they only had two shots on target which were both goals. It’s a very disappointing result. The players are very down but we have to respond to that.

on whether it is a confidence issue…
It looks like it a bit.

on how he solves that issue ahead of the north London derby…
We focus on our job and come back reminding ourselves that we have some quality as well. Of course we have to analyse it as well and bounce back. We have a big game in three days.

on whether he is worried that the league is slipping away…
At the moment I am worrying about our results. We just lost three games and that is always a very disappointing moment for the team. At the moment we don’t dream. We have to be realistic and come back to what we do well, the basics.

on Petr Cech…
He struggled. He had a little groin problem before the game and I think he struggled a little bit tonight.

on his injury…
He will not play on Saturday.

on how big the setback is…
I trust Ospina completely.

on how serious Cech’s injury is…
I don’t know, we have to see. It’s a muscular problem, a calf problem and I don’t know how long he will be out for.

on Laurent Koscielny…
He has a calf problem as well. He will not play on Saturday.

on subbing Campbell for Welbeck…
Campbell hasn’t played for a while and he started to tire. He played against a very young left back and I thought Welbeck could give him some problems with his runs in behind. These kinds of decisions don’t mean that Campbell did badly. I think he did quite well tonight. I also think that there was room on that flank to be very dangerous.

on the atmosphere…
I don’t know. Let’s focus on our job and ignore that. We have to get the fans back on our side. The fans were ready to support us tonight I think. They were quite good. We faded in the game and we could see that in the last part of the game we had a lack of movement to create dangerous situations.

on the title race…
I don’t know. It is very difficult to say because everybody drops points. At the moment, I believe that we need to get back to positive results before we speak about the Championship which is at stake at the moment. It is very difficult as it is unpredictable. Manchester City lost, Tottenham lost. It is very difficult to predict what will happen in this league.

on if Arsenal can still win the league…
Let’s focus on winning the next game and not talk about the title tonight. I’m not in the mood to do that tonight. It is a big disappointment for us to swallow this and we need to bounce back.

on what was wrong with Koscielny…
Calf.