Wenger hails ´committed´ Arsenal

Arsene Wenger hailed Arsenal’s committed display in the 2-1 Premier League victory at West Ham on Sunday.

The visitors took the lead against the run of play after 41 minutes when Santi Cazorla found the net from the penalty spot after being felled in the box by Winston Reid.

Danny Welbeck slid in to add a second three minutes later before Cheikhou Kouyate headed West Ham’s only goal nine minutes into the second half.

West Ham had earlier seen ex-Arsenal midfielder Alex Song’s long-range strike controversially ruled out for offside, and the home side looked dangerous for large spells.

However, Wenger believes his players were fully deserving of the three points that see them climb above West Ham into fifth.

“We deserved to win the game,” he said. “It was a typical committed, direct game where we needed to be solid in the air, take our chances on the break.

“Unfortunately when they came back to 2-1, we had five or six chances on counter-attacks that we couldn’t take, but overall everybody did the job very well, from the keeper to up front.

“We couldn’t finish the game off – it’s down to the quality of their goalkeeper. It’s down to sometimes missing our chances, sometimes as well maybe there was a player in a better position.

“Overall we created a lot of chances.”

Wenger went on to praise his side’s fighting spirit, adding: “It was more fight than a creative game but you need to have that in England as well, especially when we played two days ago with 10 men for 40 minutes.

“When I looked at how much we gave physically [against QPR on Boxing Day], I was worried.

“We knew before the game that we had to dig deep to win because we were a bit jaded but we did that.”

Cazorla assumed penalty-taking duties from Alexis Sanchez after the latter missed a spot-kick in Friday’s 2-1 victory over QPR.

“He [Cazorla] was the right number on the list but Alexis acknowledged it,” explained Wenger. “Everybody has missed penalties. Anybody can miss.”