Porto boss' damning reply to Arteta highlights question that Arsenal must answer
Sergio Conceicao brutally hit back at Mikel Arteta's comments about his Porto team - by saying Arsenal should focus on winning games rather than trying to look pretty.
The Portuguese side edged the Champions League last 16 first leg tie between the two clubs on Wednesday night. Despite having 65 per cent possession, Arteta's side failed to register a single shot on target and were punished as a dogged Porto scored a decisive winner in the 94th minute with Galeno's fine curling strike.
The Dragons sat deep for much of the night as Arsenal dominated the ball, but created the better chances on the counter attack. However, an unhappy Arteta criticised Porto's style post-game, claiming they had "no intention of playing".
When asked about Arteta's comments Conceicao made his stance on the night, and the result, very clear: "It's an opinion. "They wanted to play, we wanted to win."
The former Portugal international continued: "Arteta is from the [Pep] Guardiola school, who is the coach with the most titles in the world. They think that the best way to beat their opponents is to have more possession of the ball, but that depends on the team and the performers they have.
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"We had 40%-60% possession of the ball, which is not a scandal. I didn't mind having 30%-70% and winning too.
"It all depends on what you do with the ball within the strategy defined to score goals."
Galeno celebrates scoring the winner for Porto against Arsenal (Getty Images)Porto's defence was marshalled by veteran ex-Real Madrid centre-back Pepe, who has warned his team-mates they must be "perfect" in the second leg to reach the quarter-finals.
"We got an excellent result," Pepe said. "In London it will be even harder, so we have to go in even more focused than we did today. We have to be perfect.
"Galeno's goal was very important, as we want to qualify for the quarter-finals. We knew it was going to be a tough game, as Arsenal have a lot of quality, but we put on a great performance and won with a great goal."
Arsenal had won five straight Premier League matches going into Wednesday's trip to Porto, scoring 21 goals in the process. However, unlike the 5-0 victory at Burnley and 6-0 win over West Ham in recent weeks, the Gunners were lacklustre, and Arteta couldn't hide his disappointment at full-time.
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Mikel Arteta was disappointed with Arsenal conceding a late goal (Kieran McManus/REX/Shutterstock)"No, obviously we're very disappointed by the way we gave the game away at the end, and not managing that situation well enough, and you get punished in the Champions League - if you cannot win it, you don't lose it," Arteta said in his post-match press conference.
"We really dominated the game, but we lacked purpose, especially in the first half to have much more aggression, to break lines, to play forward, to generate much more threat in their backline. In the second half, there were much better things, and we generated a lot of situations without really creating much from it, but we’ll learn from it.
"Now it’s clear, it’s half-time. If you want to be in the quarter-finals, you have to beat your opponent, that’s clear, and that will be the purpose and the plan with all our supporters together to do it."
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Arsenal will need to be more ruthless if they hope to reach the last eight. Before then, the Gunners have three Premier League fixtures to look forward to, including this weekend's meeting with Newcastle at the Emirates.
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