Wenger - The key to winning the derby

Arsene Wenger says Arsenal’s “strong confidence and focus” in the Premier League could prove decisive in the north London derby.

The Gunners suffered just their second defeat in their last seven matches on Wednesday night against Bayern Munich in the Champions League.

 

While Wenger says it is “not easy” to move on from that disappointment, he wants his team to replicate their recent league performances when Tottenham visit Emirates Stadium.

 

“It was a disappointing result on Wednesday night but before that we did extremely well in the Premier League,” he said. “We will try to continue from one competition from the other.

“I believe that in the Premier League we have a strong confidence and focus and that is what we want to reproduce on Sunday against Tottenham and, as always, it is a derby. It is always a game where the commitment and nervous force will be important.

“It is not easy [to recover] because it is always a big disappointment [to lose]. When you play against Bayern Munich, and in fact I have watched the game again, not a lot has changed since my analysis afterwards.

“I believe that we created a high number of chances for a game of that stature and offensively, I was quite impressed by the number of chances we created.

“We had not our usual defensive performance, especially for the first two goals, where we gave them the goals basically, that is when it is difficult because Bayern is maybe the best team at the moment in Europe.

“If we had our usual defensive performance, we could have repeated what we had done in the first game.”