Arsenal 2 PSG 2: Arsene Wenger gives Gunners '10 per cent' chance of top spot after Champions League draw

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James Benge24 November 2016

Arsene Wenger refused to abandon hope in Arsenal topping their Champions League group despite a 2-2 draw that handed the advantage to Paris St Germain.

The French champions top the group by virtue of their head-to-head record against the Gunners, for whom a 1-1 draw in Paris is worth less than the 2-2 they had to settle for at home.

Arsenal last topped their Champions League group in 2011 and have been eliminated in the first knockout round in each of the last six seasons, often because their failure to finish in top spot earned them a tie against Bayern Munich or Barcelona.

PSG would have to drop points at home to Ludogorets to allow Arsenal to overtake them but, with the likes of Bayern and Real Madrid currently in second, Wenger is not convinced that topping Group A would necessarily hand his side much of an advantage.

“At the moment we are second but it’s not over,” Wenger said. “We have a 90 per cent chance to finish second but we wanted to finish first.

“We have not lost a game in this group and overall we have done the job well. Will it be enough to finish first? I don’t know. Will it be bad or good for us? I think we have to wait for the draw because if you look at all the groups you cannot really guess if it’s good or bad.

“The advantage if you finish first is you play the second game at home but for me what’s more disappointing is we wanted to win the game and didn’t.”

Arsenal had struggled throughout the first half, Edinson Cavani converting Blaise Matuidi’s low cross midway through the opening period, and were fortuitously handed a lifeline just before the break when Grzegorz Krychowiak felled Alexis Sanchez in the area. Olivier Giroud would convert from the spot.

The hosts upped the ante after the interval and were rewarded in bizarre fashion when a penalty box scramble culminated in Marquinhos smacking a clearance into Marco Verratti, who could only watch in horror as the ball rolled beyond goalkeeper Alphonse Areola.

But PSG were to grab the equaliser their dominance merited when Alex Iwobi deflected a Lucas Moura header beyond David Ospina, handing the French side the ascendancy in Group A. It was a result that Wenger could not complain about.

“We put the intensity into the game and overall I believe that we were committed, for periods dominant,” Wenger said. “But the start of the game was in favour of Paris St Germain because I think we let them play too comfortably.

“In the last 20 minutes of the first half we pushed up and came back to 1-1 and had a very strong start again in the second half, where we were dominant until it was 2-1 and after we dropped off. We didn’t maintain the pressure and we paid for that.

“It’s frustrating because we scored an own goal basically on the ball, where before it was a goal kick. We were a bit passive on the corner but it’s a 2-2. It’s of course disappointing because we were 2-1 up. But we played against a good team with top technical quality.”

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