Arsene Wenger has revealed that his players were worried about making a mistake in the first half against Lincoln as they started slowly against the non-league side.

Although Arsenal went into the break one-goal up, they had been ponderous amidst the high-intensity press of Danny Crowley’s men.

In the second half, as we’ve seen so often this season, they were a side transformed and could have easily scored more than the four they managed to win the game with ease, 5-0.

Speaking after the game, Wenger explained, “I felt we played in the first half with the desire not to make a mistake.

“We knew they would give us a rough game and we were really highly focused to be well-concentrated defensively and our fluidity suffered a little bit from that.

“But after we scored the first goal I felt we wanted to heighten the tempo in the second half. You could see they worked very hard to stop us from playing in the first half and they certainly paid for that in the second half.

“We were punished very hard on Tuesday night, after what I think was a good performance as long as we were 11 against 11. We were really frustrated after the game and it’s good to get that out of the system.”