Arsene Wenger praises Arsenal’s response to ‘the uncertainty that was existing in our dressing room’

Arsene Wenger praised his side for showing a “response” to “the uncertainty that was existing in our dressing room”, as he reached a third League Cup final of his career, after Arsenal’s 2-1 comeback win over Chelsea.

Once again coming through criticism to produce, Wenger even joked that “somebody once told me that at Arsenal you are never more than five minutes away from a crisis. I said no, three”.

His side have come through a difficult January with the eventual transfer of Alexis Sanchez to Manchester United, and here came through an initially difficult game. Arsenal had gone down to an early Eden Hazard goal only to claim a fortuitous own goal equaliser, but Wenger then acted with a tactical switch to three at the back that brought a Granit Xhaka goal and won the game.

“Let’s be realistic,” the Arsenal boss said. “It’s a great, satisfying night for us because we managed to beat a strong team and I felt that in January we paid a heavy price for uncertainty that was existing in our dressing room. Now we are back with more clarity, we know what we have to do and we can focus on our game and so we had difficult months, but we responded well.”

Having played down the potential effect of any win in the build-up to this match, Wenger was more than willing to change his tune after it.

“No, I think I have the right sometimes to have a small sense of humour in press conferences, even if I am not very talent in it, but that’s what I said,” he joked. “Somebody once told me that at Arsenal you are never more than five minutes away from a crisis. I said no, three.”

Asked why he started with four at the back, Wenger said: “Because we know each other well, we’ve had many draws and we wanted to win the game, we needed to score and overall I think the system, once I changed some things at half-time, worked quite well.

“They made us work for it, I felt that in the first half there were psychological and tactical reasons for us not expressing the quality of our game. We rectified that at half-time and in the second half we won the ball higher up, we could then get our midfield, who is technically very talent into the game and then we controlled the game.

“I felt in the second half basically we looked always like we could win this game and that’s what we did. In the end I would say it was a deflected goal in the first and then second one was as well a bit lucky, but I felt overall we controlled the game in the second half.”

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Having been to the League Cup final twice before but never won it, Wenger admitted he wanted to rectify that, but that his main focus is still getting back into the top four.

“It is unfinished business yes, because we didn’t win, but we are again at Wembley and many times we were there, but we are in the final again and we can take our fans there. That’s what you want, but of course now we are in it we want to win it and we will play against a very strong side, so it could become a very interesting game.

“Once we are in the final you want to win it, but yes of course you want to win it. We prepare now, but the best way to prepare is first, we want to come back in the top four in the Premier League and so before we play the final we have a big job in front of us and that’s what we want to focus on.”

Arsenal will now face Manchester City in the final, who he said “look unstoppable”, but that may not mean much on the day.

“They are dominating the Premier League at the moment, but we’ll see in the final. They are a strong side, they look unstoppable, but at the end of the day we have one chance to beat them and if you play at your best that is what we will try to do.”