Arsene Wenger admits Arsenal’s Premier League title chances are now ‘very minimal’ after late defeat to Bolton Wanderers

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Arsene Wenger has admitted that the chances of Arsenal winning a fourth Premier League title under his reign this year are “very minimal” after their defeat to Bolton.

The Gunners dominated much of the match, but failed to make their chances count as Tamir Cohen scored a late winner.

And Wenger admitted that the defeat, and the week they have endured has been “hard to swallow.”

“It’s hard to lose a game like that,” he told Sky Sports. “When you look at the way we conceded the goals, and over the week from Liverpool to today, it’s hard to swallow, but we gave everything and our attitude was fantastic.

“We were 1-0 down and we had chances to win it and unfortunately we couldn’t. We’ll have to fight as much as we can until the last game, and of course the chances are very minimal now.

“The players did fight very hard, and are very disappointed. I feel Bolton played a cup game today, the one we played was the cup. They were one week late with that performance.

“We had the opportunities to win the game, and at the moments we had the chances it was important to take them.”

When asked about comparisons to last season, where Arsenal ended without a trophy, Wenger refused to be drawn on it, insisting that the two were difficult to compare.

He said: “I don’t compare this season to last; I think we are much closer this year. We had maybe some injuries, it’s difficult to compare.

“Just this week we could have taken nine points and we have taken two. That is a massive difference. It was very minimal, but we have to take a look at some things that happened during the week that of course we have to rectify.

“We do not need to change the way we play, we just have to be more mature and I think in some situations we have been a bit too frail.

“It is very frustrating in a season where everyone else is dropping so many points, especially when you look at the way we are dropping our points.

“Now we just have to focus on preparing for our next game against Manchester United and get this result behind us.”