Hector Bellerin insists he is excited for the second leg of the Europa League quarter-final with Slavia Prague after the concession of a late equaliser at the Emirates Stadium.
Arsenal looked to be on course for a slender first leg advantage in the quarter-final tie after Nicolas Pepe’s strike four minutes from time, but Tomas Holes scored three minutes into injury time to give the Czech Republic side a boost going into the second leg.
It was pure jubilation for the Slavia players, who raced away in delight to celebrate, while Arsenal’s players and manager Mikel Arteta were left to reflect on what might have been, meaning they must travel to Prague next week needing to score to stand any chance of progressing to the last-four to lock horns with either Dinamo Zagreb or Villarreal.
Despite this, Arsenal are still being backed to reach the last four of the competition, with data analysts FiveThirtyEight giving the Gunners a 46 per cent chance of going through.
Video Unavailable
And Bellerin insists that Arsenal have what it takes to go and win the game in Prague, with the Spaniard in defiant mood after seeing his side concede the late equaliser.
Indeed, he feels that Arsenal showed in the first leg that they can dominate against Slavia Prague, adding that the Gunners will look at what went wrong in north London and learn ahead of the second leg.
“I didn’t think other than the last five minutes that the game wasn’t under our control. If you look at the first-half or the first part of the second one, they didn’t create anything or at least nothing that, to me, they deserved to be on top of us,” he said, speaking to BT Sport after the game.
Why should you sign up?
In each football.london Arsenal bulletin, we’ll be bringing you the latest breaking news, transfer features and comment pieces, as well as the key talking points for fans.
We’ll also send special newsletters when big stories break or there’s a special event happening.
How do you sign up?
It’s easy and only takes seconds.
Simply type your email address into the box at the top of this article – or any article on the Arsenal section of football.london in fact – labelled ‘Get the biggest daily stories by email’ and click ‘Subscribe’.
And that’s it, you’re all set.
If you decide later that you no longer wish to receive the emails, simply follow the unsubscribe link in one of the newsletters – but we don’t think you’ll want to.
For more details, click here.
“On the other side, we were controlling the game, we had chances where we could’ve gone 1-0 or 2-0 up but this is Europe, this is football. At the end of the day, it’s the team who scores more goals and we didn’t do that today.
“We need to do something about the way we manage the last five minutes in games, it’s us losing it. We just need to keep working it, it’s half-time and we’ll review what we did right and what we did wrong.
“I’m excited to go there and beat them.”