Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has refused to rule out his side’s hopes of winning this season’s Premier League title, urging his players to fight.
The Gunners are disappointed with the weekend’s defeat to title rivals Manchester United, having dominated much of the match, with two early goals costing their side.
Arsene Wenger has explained that his players should only feel angry and determined following the outcome of Saturday’s encounter, and must use that to push themselves forwards.
“I believe from the game, it has to make us angry and even more determined,” said Wenger.
“If I am a player, and I think with what we produced, we have a huge potential, and we lose the game. We cannot accept that.
“That’s what you want, the players have produced a quality performance. What makes you angry is that you produce that performance and, in the end, you have nothing to show for it. That’s very difficult to accept.”
The Gunners manager was then asked whether he was now ruling themselves out of the race for the Premier League title, to which he replied: “I am not Pochettino, I am Arsene Wenger. I am here to fight as long as I can.
“As long as mathematically it’s possible, you have to fight. You cannot give any other message out.”
Wenger was then asked if he was blaming his defenders for the mistakes which led to those early goals, which ultimately cost their side any hope of winning the game.
“I am not here to especially blame people,” he added. “I want Arsenal Football Club to win. When the performance is of that quality, we have to be efficient.
“We are in this job to be efficient, you know. So I blame first myself. The crowd was outstanding and the team was outstanding.
“But, we were not efficient. I cannot deny that. They scored three, we scored one.”
Can we push on and bring that fight for our upcoming matches? Do we need to rule out any hopes of catching Man City at this early point in the campaign?
Pat J
As a manager, Wenger has to keep motivating his players, to keep fighting till the end. It is good that he blamed himself for the Manchester United match result, because he has seen many similar mistakes for the last ten years and he cannot fix it till now.
I hope he would finally realize that he cannot improve Arsenal and he would do more damage than good, if he stays in the next season. It is better if he learns something new by managing a big Spanish club like Barcelona or Real Madrid next season, because his ideas are obsolete in Arsenal.
I doubt Wenger will want to go to a club where he has to cope with pressure. At Arsenal he no deliverables and a fantastic salary. At Barca or Real he would have to deliver a major title.
Agree with gotanidea.Wenger has become an ostrich .His ideas have not workedie
pretty soccer.He risks blemishing his legacy at Arsenal. The sooner he realizes that
the better.
At the risk of being redundant the latest defeat is a replica of his losses to
Chelsea and rf. Then Drogba and the English bulldog scored tons of goals.
It was so easy. Let Arsenal have possession and pass until death.Then invariably
a through ball and with the freedom of the soccer pitch,no wonder the fm has a
lousy record against the top teams.And who can ever forget the 8-2 massacre.
Any top flight manager worth his salt would have resigned.
I am afraid he has come to the end of his tether.The more he stays he will create more
problems for Arsenal.
It’s been over 13 years since We won the league. Wenger’s stubbornness to not sign the right type of players (ie top defensive midfielder and years without a top striker) and the top quality players has cost us. Every summer we are lacking in a few departments and he never fills them all.
.
Anybody who thinks we should give Wenger more time because he will get it right one day is delusional.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I appreciate the 3 premier leagues, 2 doubles, invincibles and 7 FA Cups. But 13 years without a PL or CL trophy is pathetic especially for not doing simple things like signing the right players. We have watched Chelsea win the PL and CL Trophies. We have watched Liverpool win Champions League. We have even watched Leicester win the Premier League. Enough is enough. Wenger has been given more than enough time
It’s about time that Wenger finally starts blaming himself, but that’s too little too late now! We’ve been conceding shock/early goals through shambolic defending regularly for a decade, and every decent manager knows exactly how to play against Arsenal to get a result.
Whenever we string-together some good results, it’s only a short matter of time before we go back to the same old calamity at the back. Nothing has changed, and nothing will change until the manager is replaced with somebody that lives in the 21st century.
This has been the case for so many years now, I am astonished that some fans still refuse to accept that it’s the manager’s fault. How is that possible? Wenger is the only consistent ingredient throughout, and nothing will change until he’s gone.
If we keep celebrating our quantity of possession / passes / shots instead of celebrating goals and points, then Arsenal aren’t going anywhere good.
Arsene out!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t have anything to say. Just get 3 pts against Southampton
We need to go for a young hungry coach.
take a gamble.
a good tactician from the epl.
Eddie howe looks so wenger like.
MARCO SILVA should be number one.
I would take Nora Batty over Wenger…
I think Man City have a massive 15 points advantage topping the table over us on 5th in the table after we’ve both played 14 games each. Therefore, catching Man City is a task. And can Arsenal perform this task successfully in this campaing? Well! let’s wait and see. But if Arsenal are to perform this task successfully, they have to as from now on stop dropping points to be in readiness to cspitalise on any dropped ponts by their 5 opponent Title rivals. And also they MUST beat them all when next the 3 of them come to the Emirates Stadium and when Arsenal visit 2 of them. If Arsenal csn fo this, the Title could be theirs.
You really believe the crap you have just written?
Really?
so we will win all our games and expect city to loose their remaining games lol, delusional
Its the same speech every season.
“We won’t stop until its mathematically impossible”
Except the speech seems to get earlier and earlier.
Its nothing to do with mathematics but more to do with him being a good enough manager and the team being strong enough to win it. And the evidence completely points to the fact that they are not even good enough to qualify for the champions league much win the premier league.
I cannot believe there are people who still believes he can do this.
He means well and has Arsenal at his heart but enough is enough..
15 points behind and its only the beginning of December.
Pathetic…
For Wenger to speak about the PL title at this point is just evidence of how disconnected he is from reality. He never was in the PL race this season. Not even before the season started.
He had a poor transfer window electing to keep two players who don’t want to play for us. As a result, he destroyed large sums of money and didn’t replace them. Surprise surprise Sanchez is not the 30 goal player he was last season and Ozil only recently started to put in a few decent shifts.
There is no doubt Sanchez and Ozil are world class but not even world class players can be world class if they are unhappy where they are at. No one can be surprised Sanchez and Ozil are not at their best. Only a fool would refer to a contract. We are dealing with football players, not lawyers.
We still have the mental weakness that makes us throw big games away for short periods of time. We simply can not show up for 90 minutes every game and against Man U we didn’t show up till after the game was over. The effort afterward turned out to be cosmetic only, even if it looked exciting it was not effective.
We have a weak defense and an odd and unconvincing midfield. (I think it is time to start planning for life after Xhaka because he will not rule a midfield like a Vidic or Kante – he is utterly unconvincing to me).
As long as Wenger is around we will fail spectacularly. When is the last time we assassinated a big team inside 14 minutes? We can only do that against small teams and rarely.
Was there really any Arsenal fan who was naive enough to think after going behind 2-0 against a Mourinho team that we would come back and win? Is there really any real Arsenal fan who thinks we are in the PL title race? I am sorry but to me being a fan means being realistic and knowing your team and manager and this team and manager are not PL title material.
We are not winning the title anymore but that does not mean our season is over. Let’s get over the pressure now and just go for the rest of the epl season without being under the cosh and see where it takes us plus let us not forget that all the 3 cups are still ours to lose…..