Wenger happy to ride luck

Arsene Wenger says Arsenal were fortunate to come away with three points in their 2-1 win over Aston Villa at Villa Park.

Yossi Benayoun headed home from a late Robin van Persie corner on Wednesday to give the Gunners an important victory, after Marc Albrighton scored the English Premier League’s 20,000th goal to cancel out the Dutchman’s first-half penalty.

When asked whether his side had been fortunate to win the match, Wenger said: “Yes, because Villa were dangerous.”

“I must say two things; first of all, we had two difficult away games where we have had to give absolutely everything physically and in the first half we controlled the game quite well.”

“Second half, Villa came back to 1-1 and it was a little bit of a difficult period but then we stabilised the game again, and in the last 10 to 15 minutes you could feel we were on top of the game again.”

“You can only congratulate Villa, they played well, gave everything. It was a very intense game and we got a very late three points.”

“We were a bit unlucky on Sunday (in their 1-0 loss to Manchester City) and today maybe a bit lucky, but overall it was important to re-start with a win tonight. If Villa continue to play like that they will come up the table because they had an outstanding game.”