Now it has become completely clear that Arsenal would not have the opportunity to leapfrog the league leaders Chelsea and pip them to the Premier League title, the Arsenal fans and everyone concerned with the club have begun to look at the season on the whole and look for the reasons why Jose Mourinho´s team was able to find themselves in such a comfortable position.
Arsene Wenger gave his own take on the situation in today´s pre-match press conference, reported on the Arsenal website, and the manager clearly feels that the current performances and run of form the Gunners have been showing has come too late. The Frenchman declared that the injury problems and the extra fitness issues resulting from the World Cup finals in Brazil last summer had a very negative effect on the start of the season for Arsenal.
Wenger said, “I’ve said many times that we had big injuries at the start of the season, after the World Cup, and that we only got our squad together more recently.
“Even then we still lost players like Jack Wilshere in November, and then again afterwards. We were not all together. It took us some time to find a good balance in the team and we dropped some points because of that.
“When you look at games like Stoke away, the big disappointment for us was that we had a very young defence on the day and missing players was certainly detrimental to our results.
“I look at it in a positive way because what you want from a team is to show during the season that you can grow together and become better.
“We faced a big challenge because Chelsea didn’t drop their level in the title race, and they were more consistent from the start until the end, and that’s why we didn’t catch them up.
“Overall we feel we have made progress.”
It would be nice to see if Arsenal really do have what it takes to be crowned Premier League champions again. Last season started well but was then disrupted by the usual injury crisis. But now the club seem to have sorted out the underlying injury problems. There will always be a few over the course of a season of course, but as long as we don´t have lots more than our rivals for once, Wenger will have a great chance to prove that injuries and not lack of quality or fight have been our problems over the last couple of years.
But will he be proved right and if not, will it be time for a new manager at Arsenal?
Lame Excuse.
Totally agree.
Chelsea, Man City, Pool, Man United all had players there.
Injuries yes, but that our own fault. Why did other teams not have as many injuries.
Can only blame ourselves,no one else not even refs as I think they have been more favourable to us this season.
WHAT IS TO BLAME IS HIS TACTICS AND FORMATIONS.The only reason we turned good is in fact because of multiple injuries and he was no more able to play his favourites out of position.Arteta and flam as DM it s a nono.
Mertsk without Kosc is lost.
Chambers is a back up RB,he s lost against quick wingers.
Wilshere place is on the bench…
Agreed
I don’t think he was blaming the world cup for us not winning the title – just part of the reason we had a slow start. UCL pre-qual always a pain. Players out injured was undoubtedly a reason but shouldn’t be offered as an excuse. I think at one time we had Ozil, Giroud, Debuchy, Walcott and Koscielny out (plus others) – Chelski without Fabregas, Costa, Ivanovic, Willian and Terry wouldn’t have been quite so hot at the beginning of the season and up till Xmas. Injuries are still my single biggest concern at our club – wish we could sort it out. Interesting though to see Man Utd have a worse record on the injury front. Are they doing something wrong as well?
I would swap a relatively quiet transfer window (a couple of proper class players) AND an injury free (or at least minimal injuries) season right now with any bonkers transfer smash and grab summer.
Absolute rubbish! Lot’s of other big teams had plenty of players at the World Cup, maybe even more than us, and yet they’re all doing okay.
Id have to say Arsene must take allot of responsibility for how we mucked up in beginning. He had time in window to bring in another CB or whoever but just didnt react. Per should have been our old and trusted head in there so i would say the WC affected him most.
We where scoring in the beginning but conceding hence the draws. Two or three games should have been comfortable for us and would of had us fighting che but instead some of the worst schoolboy stuff ever seen in an Arsenal jersey.
Atleast we got Coq Gab in the end… these two are going to be a big part of our hopefully successful future.
Shore up three areas and i think we have every chance – Keeper – Striker – Def Mid….
Keeper not because Ospina isnt good enough but because Szcz replacing him could end title hopes.
Striker, i think everybody can agree we need another one.
Def Mid…. Whether to replace or to sub with Coq i think all just about agree.
And this is the man that’s supposed to win us a league title (watch the down votes come)
Manchester United suffered equal number of Injuries if not more, Liverpool lost key players. CSo let us not come and cry about Injuries. I appreciate our comeback but we were never favourites to win the league. Our next aim should be to beat MU at old trafford, if we really have to show to everyone that we are really a threat next season then better beat MU at old trafford
Agree. Some actual stats below. There is a correlation between injuries and league position for top 4. Chelski are comfortably ahead of everyone else and have the best injury record in the league. Looks like Chelski and City got off quite lightly and us, Utd and Pool all about the same level.
Chelsea are 20th in “injury league” with 77 player/weeks lost over season. PL Pos: 1st
Man City are 17th in “injury league” with 100 player/weeks lost over season. PL Pos: 2nd
Arsenal are 4th in “injury league” with 219 player/weeks lost over season. PL Pos: 3rd
Man Utd are 2nd in “injury league” with 225 player/weeks lost over season. PL Pos: 4th
Liverpool are 6th “injury league” with 203 player/weeks lost over season. PL Pos: 5th
Yes we could say chelsea got lucky but apart from that both us and United have suffered similar problem. But we cannot blame injuries for our failures. We are a top club so we should be have back up.
We have been blaming Injuries every season, time to have proper back ups and cut down our losses by selling deadwoods
I think we are agreeing. Injuries are just one part of the equation when it comes to winning a league. I think numerous, prolonged and repeating injuries can be a valid reason for under performing (I assume we all understand you are not going to be as good without your best players) but people do not enjoy hearing it as an excuse. Think we are all tired of the muscular injuries some of our players keep getting – but injuries like Giroud and Debuchy sustained were just plain bad luck.
I suppose the question to ask is whether we think we would have been any closer to Chelsea in the league now if you swapped their injury stats/record with ours. It would be a separate argument but I just don’t see the quality in Chelski’s back-up players – our back-up is not significantly worse than theirs (goalkeepers aside). Perhaps a more pressing question is how did they manage to keep their injuries so low.
Chelsea have a very thin squad and thats why I said they have been lucky with Injuries. Injuries are part and parcel of the game. The truth is we were poor for 3-4 months and we were 6th after losing to tottenham this february. SO you need a miracle to win the title from that position.
Van gaal in his recent interviews admitted that you need to be consistent from the tsart to win the league. I would love if wenger does the same and accept that arsenal were not consistent enough to win the league.
I think the difference between our training and che training must be that we strive to get our players to their max peak level fitness whereas che must have a dont push them past a certain limit.
If your are aiming for the complete max it will always have danger of going too far which must be the case, i heard Van Gaal is another who strives for peak physicality.
Although a large chunk of blame must go to plain bad luck, noone can foresee a bad challenge.
The world cup execuse is lame and this is the third time he said things like this.
Keep blaming injuries, but when Man Utd and Monaco won at Emirates they have a team that was rocked by injuries.Both Man Utd and Monaco first team defenders were injured, while Arsenal played with best 11.And what about the Southampton and the Tottenham game, is the loss against them is down to injuries as well? Even the draw against Chlsea is it down to injuries?Specially the game against Monaco, Tottenham and Chelsea were played with best 11.
Yes injuries contribute to not performing, but when you see half of the game lost this season its not down to injuries alone, because even teams with more injuries has won against Arsenal.
injuries helped our season paradoxically, cos Wenger is too indecisive when every1s fit because he has too many favorites,most of them were injured so we ended up playing our best team for a huge part of the season i.e against Man City away
INJURIES AND INCONSISTENCY.
Exactly, even united suffered a lot this season but I have never heard LVG blaming injuries for defeat.It looks like a given thing, when there is a loss everybody say, ‘if it, weren’t for injuries’.
If we’re waiting for the stars to align for us to win the title it won’t happen. The reason we lost the title was simply because we weren’t able to maintain our consistency and that is precisely why you have good squad depth.
There is something deeply wrong with our medical facilities and or our training routine, a lot of our injuries are muscle strains which is very bad. People say Chelsea have been lucky to have so few injuries but this is something that has happened for several seasons, it isn’t just this one, or the last. Fabregas has played nearly every game for Chelsea, as has Matic, Azpilicueta, Cahill. Hazard, Terry and Ivanovic have played literally every fixture.
Moreover we even went so far as to give our players an extra rest when we had less players competing in the world cup than Chelsea. This is why you need good squad depth. As long as we have these repeated injuries we’ll never mount a challenge.
Injuries aren’t what allowed us to go down 3 – 0 to Stoke in the first half or lose to Swansea our Spurs. As long as we don’t fully accept the deficiencies in our squad and do something about them there will always be excuses
excuses, excuses wonder what will be next season’s excuse
if this article is correct , and i suspect that it is , then it just shows the very unsporting nature of our manager . the man is so totally dememted , he is letting the club , and the fans down , when he comes out with such childish untruths . he is an embarassment to us all . i am not calling for his head , for once , what i am calling for is that he grew up . shake opposing managers hands when we have been beaten , show the world he is a sporting gent . do not come up with lamer than lame excuses arsene , for you are losing friends and admirers everytime you spout such tripe . shame on you boss , you are a coward .
The reason we were poor at the start of the year is because we had an injury filled squad that never recovered. I don’t think our problem comes from players missing games (though this is obviously an element) but rather players being injured and playing despite these niggles until they literally drop. You saw with Ramsey he was consistently poor until injury forced him to rest. Ozil was the same. Giroud even had a drop in form prior to his injury. The key factor is our team started ragged and only got up to force after Christmas.
We also started the year without a DM which has been the turning point for us. Add to that the rise of Bellerin at right back after a first half of the year with shakey issues at RB and CB you realise that our biggest issues were self inflicted due to having a thin squad. A problem that has since been looked into and may finally get rectified.
The World Cup is not an excuse or a reason. That’s just BS.