Since the opening game of the season Arsenal have been unbeaten in the League and the Champions League, but there are still people waiting in the wings to find anything to complain about and to tell the players where they are going wrong, despite the evidence to the contrary. Witness the derogatory comments when our reserves lost in the League Cup to Southampton!
Arsene Wenger is aware that in this modern age of social media- and hundreds of TV pundits all over the world, you cannot stop the avalanche of opinions, but he wants his players to try and ignore their influence and concentrate on their own form and confidence. “You want to focus on how you want to play and how you want to win the games, and we live in a society today where everybody has an opinion and we have to live with that. It has to not influence us at all.
“We just have to do what we believe is right. Real competition is competition with yourself. That means us together, going as far as we can. After that, I have enough experience to know no matter what you do, we have always people who question what you do – that’s normal.
“We know we are not perfect and I tell you even more, we have a lot of room for improvement. But what we need is everybody putting his quality at the service of the team and having the individual desire to progress.
“I think Oxlade-Chamberlain, Walcott, they have made strides up… Xhaka, in every game that you see he is on the way up. As well, Lucas came in and scored three goals so we need the help of everybody to achieve what we want to achieve but you have as well to be conscious.”
Certainly the Ox and Walcott are the two players that were most criticised last season, and they were maybe influenced by all the negative comments every single week. It is bound to knock your confidence at some point. Maybe this is why Wenger brought in the new psychologist to teach the players to think positive things no matter what other people are saying. And Wenger is trying to reinforce those thoughts with this little pep talk?
Whatever is going on, It certainly seems to be working!
Onwards and Upwards!