Arsenal captain Per Mertesacker says he paid no attention to Troy Deeney's 'cojones' remarks

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James Benge17 October 2017

Arsenal captain Per Mertesacker insists he paid no attention to Troy Deeney’s scathing assessment of the Gunners following their 2-1 defeat at Watford.

Deeney accused Arsenal of lacking “cojones” after throwing away a first-half lead in the final 20 minutes at Vicarage Road on Saturday, adding that the Gunners had been “naïve” and easily outmuscled.

Mertesacker had offered his own evaluation of Arsene Wenger’s side after the defeat, claiming Arsenal had been “timid” as they threw away the lead their returning club captain, starting his first league match since April 2016, had earned for them in the first half.

But the 33-year-old insisted that he had no interest in Deeney’s comments.

“I don't know what he said,” Mertesacker told Sky Sports. “I don't pay attention. Anyways it was after the game I think, so I didn't watch it.

“We should concentrate on ourselves first of all, there are so many guys involved and so many opinions, which is fine, but we need to focus on ourselves and learn lessons from that.

“If we start to listen to too many people it's not worth it, honestly, I need to look at myself and think what could have been done better.

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“Afterwards, it's easy to judge and easy to say words and think we are lacking something. We have to think how we can provide better performances, especially away from home, where it gets tight and difficult.

“That is all going on here. I'm not a favourite of listening too much to other guys. I haven't done that in 15 years, I'm not going to do that in my last year.”

​Mertesacker's will have hoped his own analysis of the defeat will prompt a reaction within the Arsenal dressing room as he insisted the Gunners should blame themselves - and not a contentious penalty - for their third league defeat of the season.

“We have to admit at the end that they wanted it more,” Mertesacker said. “The second half they were all attack and we were timid. We tried to protect the goal we scored and it was not enough.

“There was a change of momentum. We had a clear-cut chance [Ozil’s miss] and after that they scored the equaliser and had momentum on their side. You could sense second half they were more up for that fight that was required, especially away from home.”