“We did not deserve more than a draw against Southampton” – Wenger

After watching his team labour to a 1-1 draw against Southampton, Arsene Wenger admitted that they did not deserve more than a draw, after a tepid performance.

Here is the full transcript of his post-match interview:

on the result… Considering our performance I don’t think we deserved more today. It is two points dropped if you look at the target we set ourselves over Christmas. It is frustrating and disappointing because we did not create a lot and if you considered we scored five at Reading and seven against Newcastle. When you sum up the goal chances there is not a lot. We lacked purpose, penetration and speed. All qualities we have usually but lacked tonight.

on the reasons for the performance… It is frustrating. It is nothing to with the physical. Maybe we thought we scored seven against Newcastle and we’d score seven today. It was a game of magnitude today against a highly motivated Southampton side but I thought [our problem] was more mental than physical.

We prepared normally and prepared well. Maybe Southampton deserve some credit as well. They fought for every ball, they were on their toes but they just did not have quite enough quality to take advantage of it

It is difficult to identify any specific thing. We have to sit down and analyse that together. We have big games coming up and we want to get back to our normal performance. FA Cup is out next game so we want to win it. We will lose Gervinho now so the squad is getting shorter.

on signing Thierry Henry… At the moment we are not on that case. But I will be active [in the January window] yes. We are looking everywhere. We are open-minded. We want to strengthen the squad everywhere.

on Theo Walcott… It is hard to single out anyone. Nobody was put in good conditions to express anything decent offensively.

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