“What do you expect me to do against Salah?”: Arsenal’s Oleksandr Zinchenko breaks silence on Liverpool after error and Mikel Arteta defence

Arsenal left-back Oleksandr Zinchenko has broken his silence on the Gunners’ 1-1 Premier League draw with Liverpool after his contribution was criticised by many.

The Ukraine international faced up against one of the Premier League’s best right wingers at Anfield with Mohamed Salah enjoying an impressive afternoon.

Salah levelled the scoring for Jurgen Klopp’s side shortly before half-time after Gabriel Magalhaes had put Arsenal ahead. Trent Alexander-Arnold’s cross-field pass was poorly read by Zinchenko before Salah fired past David Raya.

“We gave so many balls away after regaining it,” Mikel Arteta said after the game without specifically referencing Zinchenko. “That’s the worst moment against them because they are really good on the counter-press. We lost it in areas that are prohibited against them and we could have been punished.”

Ex-Arsenal striker Ian Wright later slammed Zinchenko’s performance on Merseyside. Speaking on Premier League Productions, he said: “The thing is, firstly, you cannot give Trent Alexander-Arnold that much space.

“This is a danger man. Get in his face. Try and deny him (Salah) the ball in the first place, let them pass it to someone else. Once you get into this situation (Salah with the ball) he wants to come inside, and Zinchenko knows this, but not many people can stop him.

“You’ve got to do a lot more. You cannot let him get inside that easy. It’s margins. It’s the margins our manager always speaks about in terms of winning games.

“You cannot give Salah that time, you cannot give Trent that time. Someone should have been closer to Trent. Once that ball goes over to Salah, someone should have been across to make sure he cannot cut inside. That’s why we have drawn that game. We could not stop that happening.”

And despite the criticism directed towards the 26-year-old, Zinchenko has remained upbeat over Arsenal’s Premier League title chances. Speaking to BBC Sport, he said: “There’s still a lot [of football] to play ahead of us and we just need to go step-by-step. We need to show our best performance every single time, as soon as we get onto the pitch, it doesn’t matter which competition it is. In the end, we are going to see.”