Christian Norgaard says Arsenal will not dwell on shock FA Cup exit

Christian Norgaard says Arsenal cannot afford to overthink their shock FA Cup exit at Southampton as the Premier League leaders look to bounce back in the Champions League.

Mikel Arteta’s men suffered an almighty shock at St Mary’s on Saturday evening as the Championship play-off hopefuls’ intensity and courage paid dividends in a famous 2-1 quarter-final triumph.

Substitute Shea Charles’ late strike sent Southampton to the semi-finals and left Arsenal with some soul searching as the shock defeat compounded their Carabao Cup final loss to Manchester City a fortnight ago.

The Gunners will attempt to get back to winning ways in Lisbon in Tuesday’s Champions League quarter-final first leg against Sporting, before the runaway league leaders host Bournemouth in a key game on Saturday.

Experienced midfielder Norgaard said: “The message is to have a positive body language, to talk with your team-mates, with the coaching staff.

“Now is not the time to go with our heads down for too long.

“It’s fine to be frustrated tonight and also tomorrow to analyse what went wrong, but then we also have to look forward because there are so many big games coming up for this club.”

Arsenal need to shake off their first back-to-back defeats of the season to avoid further damage to what has until recently been a memorable campaign.

“Disappointing evening,” Norgaard told club media. “We all had our hopes high to win and go back to Wembley, but yeah, that’s not the case.

“Sorry to disappoint so many travelling fans, they created an amazing atmosphere and, yeah, today was not good enough.”

Injury-disrupted Arsenal only managed to threaten periodically at St Mary’s, where few would argue that the hosts did not deserve to progress to Wembley.

Ross