Arsene Wenger threatened to storm out of his press conference when it was suggested that his unwillingness to accept that his team selection contributed to the Olympiakos defeat, backed up José Mourinho’s recent allegation that the Arsenal manager is the “only manager not under pressure”.

“Stop that story or we stop the press conference,” said Wenger.

Wenger was then asked what he thought of pundits who call his team “soft” and “weak”, both words used by Roy Keane in his analysis of the Olympiakos game. “Why always questions of being weak? [It’s] because they lack a bit creativity and they don’t analyse well,” he said. “One pundit says something on television and all behind that repeat the same thing. It’s quite boring because nobody came with numbers [to show] why the game was won or lost. It’s quite depressing to see that. They all come to the same conclusion – we lost because we didn’t play well. Yes, the goalkeeper made a mistake but we could still have won the game despite that.”