Wenger: 'I rate our chances 50/50 to go through'

Last updated : 29 March 2006 By Chris Parry
Needless to say many of the questions were centered around the return of Patrick Vieira to Highbury, but he had this to say on the subject:

"It wasn't my target tonight to justify selling Patrick. He is a tremendous player and you never lose a player like that without suffering a bit, but another team was born and is growing slowly. Football is like that.

"It was a great night for us. We wanted to play well defensively and score goals and we combined both. I'm very happy with the performance of the team and the togetherness but there was also fluency and speed and the technical quality was very high in patches. It shows the team is getting better and my only regret is that I felt there was one more goal in this game for us."

"I rate our chances 50/50 to go through and winning the tournament is a long way away. I believe we will finish the job at Juventus but there is still a lot to come and first we must win on Saturday against Aston Villa.

"Juventus will try to come at us and we will try to score goals out there.

"I feel we have to keep our feet on the ground and continue to play the game we want to play. You have to keep football as simple as you can and play in a positive mood. That's what these boys do. They are not inhibited and that is a great quality. For a long time we needed to adjust to the Premiership and find confidence and beating Real Madrid helped us do that, but football is fragile and you have to be cautious. One unexpected defeat and you are back again."

Finally, the boss was in top form when asked if he had talked with Vieira - Full marks for his comic response:

"I didn't have time to see him. When you lose you leave people alone but maybe there will be more time next week because he is suspended."