VIRGIL Van Dijk admits he was confused by the manner of Arsenal’s late winner – but insists Saints have only themselves to blame for the defeat.

The Saints defender was one of three players booked as he and his teammates protested against referee Bobby Madley’s decision to award Arsenal their injury-time penalty following Jose Fonte’s tussle with Olivier Giroud.

Van Dijk admitted he was confused as to why play continued while Arsenal captain Laurent Koscielny lay in the penalty area with a head injury.

He said: “It was pretty strange and there were players on our side who were also looking a bit confused. Giroud was saying there was contact from both and it can’t be a penalty. It’s a big decision in the last minute of the game. It’s not in our favour and it hurts.

“I’m a winner and I want to win obviously and to lose like this is hard. We need to blame ourselves because we had the opportunities and we should have done better."

Attention now turns to Thursday’s visit of Sparta Prague. “We need to step up, the Europa League starts again on Thursday, we need to be ready for that and hopefully be ready for [Saturday’s] game against Swansea,” he added.

Even Arsene Wenger admitted Arsenal had been lucky to deny his friend Claude Puel what would have been his best result in the Premier League.

Asked whether he thought play should have been stopped with Koscielny injured, the Arsenal manager admitted: “Fortunately he didn’t. Maybe he did not see that it was a head injury.

“It was a bit lucky, I must say. The situation we faced today, we were maybe a bit lucky."