Arsene Wenger on Wednesday hailed Alexis Sanchez’s unique qualities after the Chilean opened the scoring in Arsenal’s 2-0 victory at Southampton and then created a second goal for substitute Olivier Giroud.
The victory took Arsenal to within three points of the English Premier League top four and kept alive the possibility of a 20th successive season of UEFA Champions League soccer for the north London club.
Sanchez broke the deadlock in the 60th minute at St Mary’s, gathering Mesut Ozil’s pass and leaving two defenders sprawling, before firing home his 20th goal of the league campaign.
“The goal he scored tonight shows what he’s about — very good technique in a short space,” Wenger said. “He scores important goals. He has invention in his head. He’s creative, not phased by anything, and he surprised everyone in the stadium tonight with his goal. Everyone was expecting him to take a shot, but he’s very quick on the move.”
It was Sanchez’s cross that Aaron Ramsey headed back across goal for Giroud to nod in the visitors’ second goal in the 83rd minute.
“Giroud came on and the second goal was very important for us, too,” Wenger said. “We had to [dig deep] because Southampton started at a strong pace. The first half was quite even, but we were focused and determined.”
Now Arsenal must keep the pressure on the top four by showing the same focus and winning their three remaining matches, starting at Stoke City tomorrow.
Wenger knows that even nine points might not be enough to guarantee a top-four finish, but he says his team have no option but to win the games in front of them.
“We’ll need another strong performance at Stoke. We came to a difficult ground today and we go to another on Saturday,” the Frenchman said. “We know we can only win our games, and we had a strong performance on Sunday [beating Manchester United 2-0] and a strong performance today. So let’s just continue.”
Wenger is likely to be without Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain at Stoke after he left the pitch in the first half with a hamstring problem, but it is too early to say whether he will be back in time for the FA Cup final against Chelsea on May 27.
“He was walking properly. It was tight, not like a knife,” Wenger said. “It was more fatigue, but it’s difficult to assess so close.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier