Wenger: 'This will give us belief and confidence'

It was under special circumstances maybe but for us it was important to get a win against a big side to strengthen the belief of the squad and continue our march forward.

We showed intelligence and produced the needed performance against ten men when Manchester City had Dedryck Boyata sent off early in the game. From my view on the bench it looked like a deserved red card; I don't think the referee had an option.

After the sending off it became a bit electric. We got some yellow cards but then it was important for us not to get a second yellow.

I asked the players at half time to focus on playing in a positive way and to try to score a second goal - the idea was to try and get us to focus on football and not just defending our advantage. You could see that for the whole game as long as it was not 2-0 we played with the feeling that 'we need to win, we need to win' and there was a little bit of restriction in our game. After we made it 2-0 it became easier.

We missed a penalty of course and you thought back to the Sunderland game when we missed from the spot and then drew the game. On Sunday it was the reverse and overall I am very pleased because we look like we have matured.

How have we matured? In terms of negotiating in an intelligent way the difficulties of the game. That means not getting a red card on Sunday, being patient when that was needed and I think collectively we dominated the game.

It was our first win in ten games against the 'big' clubs and I can't explain to you why but it is true. In some games we were close to winning but in the end we just lost. For example at Chelsea we lost 2-0 - when you watch the game again it's difficult to understand how we lost the game apart from the fact that they took two great chances.

Now we have won a 'big' game I hope that will give us the belief and the confidence to transfer that into other games.