Defender Per Mertesacker described the loss against Swansea City on Monday night as ‘brutal‘ but was keen to stress that the team are still positive and going to only grow stronger from this defeat.

Speaking to Arsenal Player after the game, the German centreback made it clear the result had been hard on him, saying, “We tried everything to get in front, to get an opener. That would have been lovely and have made it so much easier for us. But it didn’t happen and [shows] how brutal football is. All of a sudden they score out of nothing so yeah, one of those nights.”

As frustrating as it is for us to watch, it must have been equally as frustrating to play. The BFG continued, “I think we were patient over the 90 minutes. You could see in the second half that we were nearly there. We had the chances, we created more and more and we put them under massive pressure. It’s a disappointing night for us but we’ll keep going because we believe in ourselves and that’s what made us strong in the last couple of weeks.”

He added, “That was a big punishment for us here but we are still in a good mood and I’m convinced that we’ll bounce back very quickly.”

Although Mertesacker wanted to give credit where it was due to ex-Arsenal goalkeeper, Lukasz Fabianski, who had a good game for Swansea and made some key saves, similarly to Arsene Wenger, he also wanted to point out how we made it easy for him.

“He was a good team-mate and will always be so it was a good night for him but frustrating for us. We gave him the opportunity to make good saves. I think there were plenty of chances where we could have done better in front of goal to give him no chance. He had a good today but we didn’t execute as well as we normally do.”

Indeed many of the shots saved by Fabianski were directly at him and, on any other day, we could’ve been a couple of goals to the good in the end, but, as the BFG says, it was just one of those nights.