Arsene Wenger laments poor finishing after Arsenal held by Southampton

Arsene Wenger lamented poor finishing after Arsenal were held to a 0-0 draw against Southampton at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday night.

The Gunners went close through Mesut Ozil, Theo Walcott, Alexis Sanchez and Laurent Koscielny but came up against an inspired performance from Southampton goalkeeper Fraser Forster.

The England international made 10 saves, including one point-blank stop from Ozil in the first half, to preserve Southampton's fourth clean sheet in as many games, but Wenger believes his side created enough to break the deadlock.

"The chances were created were good but our finishing was poor and at the end of the day we paid for that," Wenger said. "We cannot fault our focus, desire and energy levels, but when you create the quality of chances we did tonight you have to win the game and that's what we didn't do.

"The only thing you could say was their goalkeeper had a great performance. It was just bad finishing, we had the chances and at the moment we have played three games without scoring, but not without creating chances, and you go through patches like that."

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The Gunners have gone three league matches with scoring for the first time since 2009, and more dropped points on Tuesday saw them lose further ground in the title race.

Leicester City, Tottenham and Manchester City all picked up wins leaving Arsenal in fourth place, and Wenger's side have failed to win in four straight league games.

"We have to keep the belief and solidarity and not drop our confidence," Wenger continued. "We dropped points in the race but we have to focus on winning games and not focus too much on what our opponents do.

"Leicester won again and now I'm sure that everyone will take them very seriously, especially in the media, so they will be under pressure as well. But we have not to look too much at Leicester or Man City, we have to win football games and focus on responding quickly and winning our next game."

Mohamed Elneny was Arsenal's only signing of the January window, and after the game Wenger said it is difficult to find strikers with the quality to improve his squad.

"If you knew a world-class striker who could strengthen our team you should have told me before the transfer deadline," he said. "They do not walk in the street and say 'here is a world-class striker, can you take me?'

"They are all at big clubs and they are under contract. There's none available and we have Walcott, Giroud, Ozil, Sanchez, [Danny] Welbeck, who is coming back.

"If tonight we think a miracle man could have scored the goal for us, it's better we think how can we score the goals with the players we have. We can score goals, we've shown that before."

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