Arsenal: Arsene Wenger credits Sheffield Wednesday for a deserved League Cup victory

Arsene Wenger blamed Arsenal's lack of creativity and poor defending for their 3-0 loss to Sheffield Wednesday in the Capital One Cup on Tuesday (27 October). The north London club were completely outplayed by the Championship side at Hillsborough with Sam Hutchinson wrapping up the win after scoring the third goal in the second half. Earlier, Ross Wallace and Lucas Joao had given them a 2-0 first-half lead. The Frenchman credited the Owls' for their resolute performance and believes Carlos Carvalhal's men deserved their victory against the Gunners.

Apart from the disappointing loss, the Emirates Stadium outfit also lost Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo Walcott to hamstring and calf injuries respectively after just 20 minutes of being in the game. The former started the game, but was replaced by the latter after five minutes. Walcott lasted just another 15 minutes and was replaced by young Frenchman Ismael Bennacer.

Wenger had made a number of changes to his squad with many senior players given the day off. After the injuries to the English duo, the French manager was left with a young inexperienced squad, which included three debutants in Alex Iwobi, Glen Kamara and Bennacer, who along with the rest of the team failed to deal with the intensity of Wednesday, who are in good form in the Championship. The manager blamed the loss of possession in key areas as another reason for the heavy defeat. Wenger, however, despite his desire to win the League Cup clash, believes his team can now totally focus on the Premier League and Champions League.

"It was a bad night at the office, we lost two players and after that we were not good enough, but on top of that you have to congratulate Sheffield Wednesday. They put in a great performance, very resoloute, very dynamic and so they deserve their win tonight," Wenger said, as quoted on Arsenal's official site.

"I think we had a lot of the ball, we just didn't make a lot with the ball because we did not create anything. We were too short in midfield especially tonight and then it was down to not conceding anything from set-pieces [or] on on the counter-attack and unfortunately we did that because we lost balls in situations where we should not have lost the ball," the French manager explained.

"Ideally I would have loved to have won tonight. I will not use that as an excuse but I'm sure as a squad now we can focus on other competitions."