
{"id":2763,"date":"2014-03-17T02:52:11","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T02:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=2763"},"modified":"2014-03-17T05:18:24","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T05:18:24","slug":"chelseas-loss-makes-race-more-interesting-wenger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/chelseas-loss-makes-race-more-interesting-wenger\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Chelsea&#8217;s Loss Makes Race More Interesting&#8221; Wenger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger says his side put up a &#8221;special spirit&#8221; against Tottenham to go back into Premier League tittle contention following Sunday&#8217;s 1-0 win against their arch rivals at White Hart Lane.<\/p>\n<p>The Gunners claimed victory in the north London derby thanks to Tomas Rosicky&#8217;s rocket after just 72 seconds, with the home side going on to dominate possession without finding a leveller.<\/p>\n<p>Arsenal&#8217;s trip to Spurs was the latest in a line of testing fixtures which saw them overcome Everton in the FA Cup quarter-finals before exiting the UEFA Champions League against Bayern Munich.<\/p>\n<p>Man City are a two points Arsenal and Liverpool with two additional games to play on the duo in second and third, but Wenger said Chelsea&#8217;s loss at Villa Park on Saturday makes the Gunners&#8217; next game more interesting.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It makes the next game very interesting. The win for Liverpool at Man Utd, and the fact that Man City won yesterday, it makes it very interesting.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;From time to time, it&#8217;s important to know you cannot always be super-dominant in a season. And to win games when you&#8217;re not is important.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Wenger admitted his side were not at their usual fluent best at White Hart Lane, but pointed to the impressive defensive display produced by his side to keep a clean sheet against their fierce rivals.<\/p>\n<p>He added: &#8220;We absorbed a lot of pressure from Tottenham today.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We scored an early goal, so we were protecting our lead and we didn&#8217;t take advantage enough of our counter-attacks, especially in the first half.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As long as you don&#8217;t score the second goal you are under pressure. Tottenham played well, they had a very good game, and defensively we needed to be special.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you look at the clear-cut chances, we had better chances. They had a lot of possession today, a lot of domination. I agree we didn&#8217;t have our usual possession, and that&#8217;s down to their effort and commitment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But, as well, you have to give credit to our defensive quality.&#8221;Chelsea continue to lead the Premier League table despite their defeat at Aston Villa on Saturday, but Liverpool and Arsenal are now just four points back with a game in hand.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger says his side put up a &#8221;special spirit&#8221; against Tottenham to go back into Premier League tittle contention following Sunday&#8217;s 1-0 win against their arch rivals at White Hart Lane. The Gunners claimed victory in the north London derby thanks to Tomas Rosicky&#8217;s rocket after just 72 seconds, with the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,80],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2763"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2783,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2763\/revisions\/2783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}