Arsene Wenger has congratulated Manchester City following their 3-0 win in Sunday's EFL Cup final, admitting that Arsenal were punished for their mistakes.
The Gunners squandered their best chance of the match inside the opening 10 minutes, as Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's close-range effort was kept out by Claudio Bravo.
Arsenal were then undone by a simple ball over the top from Bravo, which Sergio Aguero took advantage of to put City on their way to a comfortable victory.
Wenger took issue with the match officials' decision to let the Citizens' second goal - an instinctive finish from Vincent Kompany - stand, but could not complain about the eventual outcome of the game.
"I felt the game, we had the first good chance, a very easy one that we missed," he told Sky Sports News. "After that we made a big mistake for their first goal. But we controlled them pretty well in the first half, but they came out in the second half, and we were unlucky because the second goal was offside.
"But congratulations to Man City, they deserve the win. You have to accept being criticised when you lose games. But I believe we have to recover quickly. We got to the final, we lost, so now we have to focus on the next Premier League game. When you lose 3-0 of course you have to look at defending better, but I still feel like for large periods we defended well.
"We lost concentration sometimes and against good teams you pay for it. It's not the application that was missed it was the concentration at key periods that was missed. The second goal was a big goal in this game and for me, it was 100% offside. We analyse all the games in a very mathematical way, we didn't give too many chances away, but we gave away easy chances, and didn't create enough for ourselves."
Arsenal are 10 points off the top four in the Premier League with a game in hand to play, following Tottenham Hotspur's 1-0 win at Crystal Palace earlier today.
Daniel Lewis
