David Moyes
What are your thoughts on the performance and the result?
“We showed some good resilience and resolute in the first half. We done things which were quite good at times and we’ve shown over the years we can be tough and hard to beat, but we didn’t do that in the second half. Arsenal played well in the first half as they did in the second half, but we looked soft in the second half and gave them opportunities to score.
On the next few things
“It’s no different from tonight’s game. Only get three points from every game, so take it one at a time. Tonight was a hard game coming to Arsenal who are in great form. We didn’t do too badly for periods in the game, but we didn’t do enough to get over the line.
On Scamacca
“He rolled his ankle so with a bit of luck he has a good chance for Friday. Nayef had a virus and he’s returned so we have a bit of work to do with him to get him back.”
What would you put that drop off in the second half down to?
We tried to play, I’ve got to say Arsenal did a lot of good stuff, they smothered us in the first half, made it very difficult for us to play, but it was a bit of despair, five/10 minute spell after 50 minutes where a couple of decisions changed it a little bit, the momentum of the game, things turned a little bit. The first goal was down to a little bit of fortune for Arsenal, maybe they needed a bit of good fortune to get them up. Maybe we were going to try and hold them out but they played really well, Arsenal. We should’ve done a better job, we should’ve saved the second one, stopped the third one. The first one, Dec had a chance and it was getting passed in, we don’t make the pass correctly, Dec gets caught and it gives Odegaard the chance to take a shot when we should be blocking it. We get unlucky with the way the shot goes and the way it falls.
Are you frustrated at conceding from individual errors?
Tonight I am because normally, if there’s one thing we’re not bad at, for all our failings this season, it’s not mainly been our defensive work. Tonight, I liked it in the first half, I didn’t like it in the second half because it didn’t do well enough to make sure we kept them out.
Do you think you are looking at a potential Premier League winning manager in Mikel Arteta?
I think Mikel might go on to be one. Do I think they’re going to win it this year? I’m not sure. I think you’d be remiss if you don’t think of Man City. You’d be doing them down. They’ve got a fantastic team and there’ll be other teams that are a bit more used to being around the top, maybe a Liverpool later on. Not to say that Mikel isn’t building a side capable but I think he’ll know that Man City will be the ones. They’ll come here and they’ll keep the ball off Arsenal. Arsenal kept the ball off us tonight, Man City will come here and keep the ball off Arsenal and it’ll become a different type of game for them.
Is the danger of coming to Arsenal the fact how quickly a game can go when first conceding?
Yes, we wanted to try and come. We knew that they would get up on top of us. We wanted to try and get behind Arsenal, we did do. We got in behind three or four times, one of sort of leads to a penalty kick. We did okay but we found it difficult to get any sort of build in our play and that was because of Arsenal having lots of build and a lot of the ball. But, at least first half you can put up with it because you get a goal from it, you get something from it. You can see that they are working really hard. A couple of decisions went for us. It did hit Cressy’s head, it didn’t hit his hand at all. We’re probably disappointed that it was even flagged up as a penalty kick to be honest. Just a couple of things changed in the second half and it changed the momentum slightly. That wasn’t the reason we lost but it didn’t help, that’s for sure.
Did you feel quite short on attacking options from the bench without Gianluca Scamacca and Maxwel Cornet?
Just tonight we were, but we like the boy Divin because he does the running and does the work for the team and he put himself out there. I’m glad we got him some minutes.
Did Divin Mubama deserve his chance based on his recent form at youth level?
Yes and like anybody else, we’re still wanting to bring our young players through when we possibly can. Divin has been a little bit up and down but we’ve left him for a little while and hopefully we can bring him back in the coming months.
What’s your message to the fans in terms of keeping optimism?
Just think of where we were three years ago. We’ve been In Europe, the journeys we’ve all had in Europe, it’s been fantastic. It’s been a great three years at the club, it’s been terrific.
