City comes back to beat Arsenal

Theo Walcott opened the scoring after just five minutes but second-half goals from Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling gave Pep Guardiola's side the three points and made it back-to-back defeats for the Gunners.

Wenger was frustrated with the awarding of a corner to Everton from which Ashley Williams scored the winner in their 2-1 defeat at Goodison Park on Wednesday (AEDT), and he blasted the decision to allow City's goals to stand in the second half at the Etihad.

Wenger picked up where he left off and once again took aim at the officials, who he believes are protected like 'animals at the zoo'.

"But, as it is well known, the referees are protected very well, like the lions in the zoo. So we have to live with those decisions.

"I want them to be very well protected and to be safe, but safe and a good decision is even better. But I don't want to make the referees the subject of a press conference."

The 66-year-old feels "enough is enough" after accusing referee Martin Atkinson and his assistants of failing to spot offside infringements from Sane and David Silva, who ran close to goalkeeper Petr Cech's line of sight as Sterling struck his winner.

Speaking to Sky Sports, he said: "I feel we dropped physically in the second half. In the first half we were dangerous and sharp.

"On top of that the decisions went against us. The two goals are two offside goals and, in a game of that stature, I feel that enough is enough because we got some bad decisions throughout the season.

"The second one is five yards offside. The first one is still offside. But what can I do? We have to live with that and look at ourselves and analyse why we lost the game

"It's a shame because in the two games we were 1-0 up and we lost 2-1. I believe that we were quite in control and in the second half we suffered a bit physically after they came back into the game."

Wenger also pointed to a build-up of away fixtures in the wake of a Champions League trip to Basel as a factor behind "a horrible week" in which Arsenal has dropped to fourth in the Premier League table and only one point above Tottenham.

"It's difficult because we've played four games out of five away from home, we had a very short recovery from Saturday to Tuesday after we had already played in Basel," he said.

"They didn't create many chances. You can see we dropped a bit physically and it allowed us to press us more and win balls back.

"It's a horrible week but it's part of the season. What is horrible is that we knew it was a difficult week because we had the Champions League game before that, but we had control in every game. But the mentality is strong and we have to respond now."

Goalkeeper Petr Cech admitted he had been wrong-sighted by the movement of players for Sterling's goal, but insisted Arsenal had been in control of the match.

"I think the change was the early goal in the second half, I think it gave them a lot of confidence having been 1-0 down at half-time," the 34-year-old said.

"I thought we were in control of the game second half even though they had more possession, but we couldn't hold on and the second goal obviously changed everything.

"I have to say that there were players in front of the ball so I didn't see the shot [from Sterling]. There were players running across. I didn't see if it was David Silva or not.

"We are very disappointed with the whole week. We had two games away and wanted to have as many points as possible but we have none. We gave the other teams a tough advantage but there is a long way to go. We have to win the next game and then we can go on a run."