Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger believes he thought it was going to be one of those days the moment Theo Walcott hit the post when coming on as a substitute.

Asked after yesterday’s narrow win over West Ham about whether he thought his side would drop points, the Frenchman explained how the way Theo Walcott’s ball bounced off the post and straight into Robert Green’s hand could have been a sign of things to come with the Gunners luckily managing to find the winning goal in the end.

Wenger was full of praise for his players who kept on pushing forward without any particular panic as they remained calm and playing their game.

Arsenal won thanks to an 88th-minute header by midfielder Alex Song who took full advantage of a brilliant run down the left from Frenchman Gael Clichy who delivered a perfect cross for his head.

After West Ham, Wenger said:

You always have concerns because you would always like to finish teams off in ten minutes but football doesn’t work like that.

The special moment I thought about [dropping points] was when the ball hit the post and then bounced back into the goalkeeper’s hands. That is usually not a good sign but even more so when Carlton Cole came on because you think that he has the ingredients when everybody else goes forward to score you a goal [on the break].

But we kept going and out of this game we can say we have once again shown a great attitude and we have matured. You can see that when it doesn’t work for us the players remain calmer than before.