Arsene Wenger was positively gushing after watching his side defeat champions Manchester United at the Emirates.
Arsenal 2-1 Manchester United
Arsene Wenger: “I am very proud of the performance. It was a fantastic game and we won against a great side, who were very dangerous going forward. The team was not faultless, but we were spot-on spirit-wise. Now we want consistency and to keep winning.”
Sir Alex Ferguson: “It is a big blow to us. We needed to win the game. Our results against the other big clubs is a big concern. It is a complete opposite to last year, when we lost at Chelsea and drew at Arsenal but won the rest. We have got to get above 85 points to have a chance of winning the league, so we must keep going for it.”
Liverpool 3-0 West Bromwich Albion
Rafa Benitez: “Robbie (Keane) has game intelligence and he is always a threat to defenders. It was only a matter of time before he scored in the league. He is quick and can punish any mistakes that defenders make, and that is what he did.”
Tony Mowbray: “We intended to be attack-minded and for long spells we held our own. We had a sloppy 10 minutes and we were punished for that. But we had some young strikers out there against top-class defenders. They were a little naive at times.”
Hull 0-1 Bolton
Phil Brown: “He (goalkeeper Jussi Jaaskelainen) is certainly one of the best in the Premier League, and that’s the standard we have to attain. He has been around for 10 or 11 years now, and I remember a number of sterling performances like that when I was at the club.”
Gary Megson: “He (Jaaskelainen) will get the headlines, and rightly so because his performance was unbelievable, as good as you are ever going to see. Some of his saves, like the one from the free-kick – which was bad defending from ourselves – at point-blank range was good enough.”
Sunderland 1-2 Portsmouth
Roy Keane: “It’s very disappointing. We clearly didn’t deserve to lose and had enough chances to win the game easily, so to throw it away like we did is very disappointing. I’ve no complaints over the penalty – it was a typical, unnecessary, striker’s challenge – but we’ve paid the price for not taking our chances when they came around.”
Tony Adams: “That was probably our worst performance in the four games we’ve played since I took over and yet we’ve won – I haven’t got a clue how this game works! In the first half we were poor, giving the ball away far too easily, and I just talked at half-time about technical stuff, being compact, keeping the ball better and looking after Cisse, who I thought looked very dangerous today.”
West Ham 1-3 Everton
Gianfranco Zola: “It’s very difficult to accept. It is not the first time we’ve spoilt a good job in the last 10 minutes of a game. It is something that concerns me very much, obviously. The only thing I can say right now is that we need to find a solution.”
David Moyes: “He (Louis Saha) is a top talent. He has not missed a day’s training since we signed him. If he can continue to get goals then it will help him and us. He is on a two-year contract and signing him was a bit of a no-brainer for us.”
Wigan 0-0 Stoke
Steve Bruce: “Credit to Stoke because they had two banks of four and we could not break them down. After the break we lifted the tempo but then we were worried about being hit on the break. We needed one of our flair players to produce a bit of magic but it did not happen.”
Tony Pulis: “We were smashing defensively. The only disappointing thing was that we had the chance to break on a couple of occasions but gave the ball away cheaply. In the last 10 minutes they threw everything at us but we got blocks and a point is a fantastic result. We have to keep putting in performances like these.”
