Arsene Wenger has highlighted the importance of not becoming aggressive when a team is playing a ‘physical‘ game against us.

In our match against Newcastle on Saturday, it soon became clear that the Tyneside team had set out to kick us off the pitch. Within minutes they picked up a yellow card and just past the quarter of an hour mark, they received a red.

However, the boss believes you have to be patient in these situations in order to not allow the game to run away from you.

Speaking about how he approached the match, Wenger explained, “Patience and nerves. I believe that we needed to not rush our game, to wait for our chances and to take one of them. I must say that Newcastle decided from the start to make the game quite physical and we had to keep our nerves and not become a little bit aggressive as well. I thought we did that well.”

Despite having 74% of the possession and nine shots on target, we still failed to convert any goals. Although we did score one, it was a deflection of Fabricio Coloccini from an Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain shot, which eventually gave us the lead.

“Afterwards it was a strange game,” the boss said. “You play away from home, 11 against 10, and you know that they will play 15 yards deeper, you play 10 against nine in the final third, the crowd is behind their team which puts pressure on the referee, and then it’s very difficult.”

Wenger added, “We didn’t find the space. They defended well and they’ve shown why they didn’t concede at Manchester United as well. We are happy to have the three points and to win 1-0.”

At the moment, it’s another three points. However, the glaring issues within our team aren’t going anywhere.