Wednesday 30 September 2015 11:30, UK
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger defended his decision to start with goalkeeper David Ospina ahead of Petr Cech following the club's 3-2 home defeat to Olympiakos in the Champions League.
The Colombia international scored an own goal to help put the Greeks 2-1 in front five minutes before half-time, before the visitors ended a run of 12 losses in a row against English opposition in Europe thanks to Alfred Finnbogason's second-half winner.
However, Wenger refused to accept he had made an error by not selecting Cech, who he signed from Chelsea in the summer, for this crucial Group F encounter, the result of which has now left the club desperately needing to get a result in their next two games against Bayern Munich.
"I make the decisions and the selections for the team and am responsible for it," said the Frenchman after the game, with Cech having also not featured in Arsenal's first group-stage loss at Dinamo Zagreb. "And I know many things that maybe you do not know and that you ignore.
"You cannot select a team by making a poll before the game and get everybody's opinion. Ospina played 19 games last year, kept 14 clean sheets, last week at Tottenham he had a fantastic game. No 'keeper is mistake free. It could have happened to Cech as well, that's part of it."
"I don't give you why, I do not have to sit here and give you any explanation about every decision I make. You are capable to judge what I do and I leave you to that."
"He [Cech] had a slight alert before the game at Leicester, I didn't want to take a gamble, but it's not because of that that we lost the game. It's a farce."
Wenger went on to claim that Olympiakos's victory, which has now left Arsenal in severe danger of not qualifying from the group stage of the competition for the first time since he arrived at the club in 1996, was due to a combination of poor defending and bad luck.
"We lacked a bit of concentration," he said. "We played against an Olympiakos side who defended really well, but there was a bit of bad luck as well because they had four shots on target and they scored three goals, and that happens once out of 100 games in the Champions League."
