Arsene Wenger defends decision to play Ospina after Arsenal defeat: ‘It could have happened to Petr Cech’

Arsene Wenger firmly defended his decision to drop Petr Cech for tonight’s critical Champions League match, maintaining that David Ospina was not responsible for their shock defeat.

Cech was left on the bench with what his manager confirmed was a “slight alert” that he had picked up ahead of the game against Leicester. His deputy had a disastrous night at the Emirates, dropping a corner under no pressure to gift Olympiakos a 2-1 lead on the stroke of half-time.

The 3-2 defeat against the Greek champions leaves Wenger’s side requiring a remarkable turnaround to make it out of their group, and the manager admitted his side would need a positive result against runaway group favourites Bayern Munich at the Emirates.

With the manager’s only summer signing deemed fit enough for the bench questions hung in the air as to why Wenger had chosen to rotate his squad in a match in which no less than three points could be tolerated.

However he refused to blame his reserve goalkeeper, or agree that the match would have had a different result with a Champions League winner in goal.

“Look, that is always the simple thing,” Wenger said when asked whether he regretted picking the Colombian keeper.

“Ospina played 19 games last season, he kept 14 clean sheets. Last week at Tottenham he had a fantastic game, no keeper is mistake-free. It could have happened to Petr Cech as well. That’s part of it.”

And Wenger refused to explain his rationale behind the change in goal, only saying: “I don’t give you why, I do not have to sit here and give you explanation about every decision I make. You’re capable of judging what I do, I leave you to do that.

“I make the decisions and the selections for the team. I’m responsible for it. I know many things that maybe you don’t know and that you ignore. We cannot select the team by making a poll before the game and getting everyone’s opinion.

A torrid night for the hosts was made all the worse when Laurent Koscielny came off early in the second half with a hamstring injury to be replaced by Per Mertesacker.

And the manager defended his decision to rest several key players, whilst keeping the likes of Koscielny in the side.

“We play many games, that’s why we rotate. The other teams in the Champions League do it as well, look at the benches and they rotate their players. You cannot play every three days without rotation. That’s a fact.”