Shakhtar Donetsk manager Marino Pusic was left to rue the brilliance of David Raya whose late save helped Arsenal return to winning ways in the Champions League last night.
The Gunners, looking to bounce back from Saturday’s shock defeat against Bournemouth, were again some way short of their best and were forced to dig deep late on having wasted a host of opportunities to make for a far more comfortable evening.
Ultimately, the two teams were separated by Dmytro Riznyk’s unfortunate own goal and although the goalkeeper partially redeemed himself late on with a penalty save from Leandro Trossard, that stroke of misfortune proved decisive.
Skakhtar did produce a spirited late rally and came within a whisker of rescuing anunlikely point only for Raya to add another excellent save to his burgeoning catalogue.
‘It was a fantastic save from him and to be honest I thought it was a goal because the shot was also very good,’ said Pusic after the game.
‘But of course it’s a quality, quality goalkeeper and you need to be a bit lucky with that ball, maybe for it to bounce to surprise him or something like that.
‘But at that moment I was really hoping that’s it this is the goal.’
Arsenal are back in action on Sunday against Liverpool in a must-win Premier League clash and Mikel Arteta acknowledged his side have significant room for improvement.
‘Well we played two and half days ago, after internationals, after flying from Brazil and many countries, I was expecting that we could drop off a little bit,’ the Arsenal manager said.
‘And the fact we put so much in the first half and didn’t convert and get the distance in terms of the result and the scoreline that far, I think we paid a little bit of that.
‘Then we made life more difficult for us because obviously we started to give the ball away and not regain the ball in the right areas and it was more open so that didn’t help but we have four days and believe me on Sunday we will be flying.
‘We’ll review what we have to do, we have a day off and then two days to prepare the game and Sunday is far and we are more than comfortable that we’ll be in a great place.’
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