Wenger: 3-0 was unfair on us, title race not over

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Date	Time	C	Opponent	F	A	R	S
29 Nov	4:00 PM	P	Chelsea (H)	0	3	Lost

Manager Arsène Wenger has said that the score in yesterday's defeat against Premiership leaders Chelsea was not fair on his team, especially as they had a perfectly good goal disallowed.

Arsenal lost 3-0 to the Blues and found themselves 2-0 down in the first half to a Didier Drogba striker, plus a Thomas Vermaelen own-goal.

However, Wenger feels that all the attacking play were done by his team and that Andrey Arshavin also had a perfectly good goal disallowed.

There was also the small matter of a foul not being awarded to striker Carlos Vela, who when he came on terrorised the Chelsea defence with Theo Walcott.

Wenger said: "I do not want to talk too much about the referee. I think we make mistakes, and I just think the referee got the turning point of a game wrong.

"On the penalty I think it was at least a foul on the edge of the box. If he gives a foul to Drogba when he scored, he cannot say it was not a foul on Vela. I just think that on the goal, he made a massive mistake, because you cannot say that one of our players kicked the ball out the hands of Cech.

"That means he has seen it, or he has not seen it. He can't be wrong on the foul, but you cannot say to me that he saw Eduardo kicking the ball out of Cech when it's not true. You see in the replay that Eduardo doesn't even intervene. [The referee said] dangerous play, Eduardo kicked the ball out of Cech's hand.

"When you start a game in the second half and you are 2-1 instead of 2-0, it's psychologically different. And he got that decision wrong. That does not mean that we don't need to look at ourselves and ask why we conceded the goals.

"The score is a very unfair reflection of the game, but it is the score and we cannot change it now. I believe that Chelsea had absolutely everything for them today and we can only deal with that now and respond in our next game. Because first shot on goal, they scored. Second cross, they score. And after it was difficult.

"After, it was a turning point by the referee that I personally believe is not a serious decision. Very unfair. How can he see Eduardo kicking Cech when it was a Chelsea player who stops him from controlling the ball? The 2-1 was a very important goal in this kind of game, and that was a big mistake by the referee.

"Chelsea are strong players, yes, physically strong players. But that is an impression as well. When a team is 2-0 up and just defending their half and play is on the break, it's too easy to have that impression. I don't share that point of view.

"I think they lost many balls today, where we couldn't take advantage and made many technical mistakes where we couldn't take advantage, and that has nothing to do with the physical impact of the game."

And after beating Manchester United, Liverpool and now Arsenal, Wenger feels that the Blues are in prime position to win the league.

He added: "I believe at the moment they are in a very strong position, but this team, for me, they can drop points. I'm convinced of that. That's an impression I have."

Nevertheless, the Frenchman must be disappointed that his team have yet again failed a high-profile test against one of their biggest rivals.

If we're to effectively be title challengers we must take points off the other teams in the top four and so far we've failed to do so against either United or Chelsea, and scored own goals in both games.

Wenger refused to commit to buying players in January, saying that he prefers instead to have all his players back from injury. However, he stopped short of ruling his team out of the title race, despite Chelsea's 11-point gap.

Wenger said: "I do not think it's over. I think we are fighters and we have to show that in the next game. The problem we have at the moment that we face is that people will not believe in us, so we have to make sure that lack of belief does not diminish our belief.

"And that's where we have to be mentally stronger than we were until now. Because until now, we had some credit that we earned at the start of the season from the specialists, and then we a lose a game. And now it will be harder."

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