LONDON -- Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has said his comments about referees were taken out of context after Everton boss Ronald Koeman joked that he always blames the officials after losses.
Wenger criticised referee Mark Clattenburg for incorrectly awarding a corner that led to Everton's second goal in their 2-1 victory at Goodison Park on Tuesday. When those comments were relayed to Koeman, he laughed it off by saying: "It is the third time in a row I won at home against Arsenal and three times in a row it was about the referee."
When asked on Friday whether he was a bad loser, Wenger said Koeman had been misled by the question that was asked in the postmatch news conference.
"In my job, people who like losing, believe me, they don't last a long time," he said. "And concerning the referee: yes, I don't agree with the performance of the referee against us on Tuesday night but I didn't say a word about it.
"It's the old trick that the journalists, young journalists who are very ambitious, do. They take a lie into the question for the next manager and hope he responds to it. If you read well what I said after the game, you will see that I didn't say a word about the referee."
Wenger did say he was "very disappointed" over the late corner, but also made it clear that his team should have defended it better. Ashley Williams headed in the hosts' winner from an 86th-minute corner, which was awarded despite the ball being deflected out of play from the shoulder of Everton's Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
"It was not a corner," he said after the match. "You could see from our side it was no corner. But I think we have to live with a wrong decision and it does not explain why we did not head the ball after. I think I am really disappointed because Clattenburg was in a very good position to see they headed the ball out and it's not the first time we are unlucky with this decision this season."
Wenger reiterated that criticism on Friday but also said Arsenal shouldn't "look for excuses."
He added: "In the second half we were completely in control of the game and we lost it on bad luck I believe, because it was not a corner and some decisions when you watch the game again were questionable.
"The response is to say, 'Could we have won the game despite that?' and I have to say yes. That is where we have to be objective and analyse it. We can only master what we can influence ourselves. That is where maybe we have to analyse that well and not look for excuses, but really see where we failed to win the game."
The Everton defeat was Arsenal's first away loss of the season, and Wenger called on his team to move on quickly ahead of the City game.
"What you want is to respond in a very positive way and with a positive result," he said. "I believe we are on a long-term target, we have a long-term target in front of us. It's to fight for the Premier League. We know that when you have a target like that, you go through disappointments and the way you respond to it is the most important."