It could not have been easy for Arsene Wenger to face the press after seeing his Arsenal side struggle and eventually lose against our fierce local rivals Tottenham in the north London derby yesterday. But that is one of the things you have to do, unless you decide to throw the dummy out of the pram like Jose Mourinho or Alex Ferguson have done in the past.
And while the Frenchman was clearly not happy about the play acting and bad tackle by Danny Rose and was surely less than impressed by the one-sided and generally poor officiating by the referee Martin Atkinson, he kept his cool and just suggested that the ref had been like the Gunners in having an off day. Wenger showed a real touch of class by admitting that the Gunners had been second best on the day, as an Arsenal.com report shows.
He did not have to, especially with the ill feeling between the two clubs, and he did not have to heap praise on the player that caused the Gunners most of our pain, Harry Kane, either. Many managers would not think to praise any player not in their own team but Wenger was fulsome in his praise of the young striker, declaring that he must surely be in the next England team picked by Roy Hodgson.
I like the way the boss did not try to absolve the blame form Arsenal because it should encourage the players to take the responsibility for this defeat and make sure to put it right in the games coming up.
He said, “We defended well. We scored early but I think going forward, we didn’t produce enough. When we went forward, we always looked dangerous to score but were we too focused to defend our goal? I think so.
“I believe that we made too many technical mistakes compared to our usual level, because of Tottenham in the middle of the park. They put us under pressure and we lost some balls we are not used to losing.
“`[Kane] was good as always. He grows and he has a good determination. He doesn’t stop, he keeps going. The regret I have is that we gave him a cheap goal. It’s worrying that at the back, with five minutes to go, we are always there ready to make the same mistakes. Overall, we defended with solidarity but the biggest regret is that we didn’t have a good day. We can do much better – that is for sure and that is the positive of the day.”
Maybe Wenger has seen the photos of Kane wearing an Arsenal shirt as a boy and is thinking that he might do a Sol Campbell one day and swap the spuds for a proper club.
Yesterday there was an article on how
Wenger dismissed Spurs chances of top 4.
Today he is all class by complimenting Kane 🙂
And trying to compare Wenger with Mourinho. Oh dear.
Mourinho wins titles and has a very entertaining
and infornative style. Our chap venerates 4th place
and talks about hand breaks 🙁
even if Kane joins our youth ranks…he will still be loan out and then be sold
I was today chatting with my Man united friend and he even after getting the late draw was gutted and said Manchester united should improve otherwise top 4 wont be easy. I was smiling and thinking, when will our fans think like the same. Two wins we here were acting over the moon and here is a Man utd fan gutted even after a comeback against tough west ham side.
I’ll admit, most of us were in the clouds and needed to be knocked down to earth. So maybe now we’ll show more consistency in our form.
Don’t want to even think about that game any more, we need to move on. We did the treble over Spurs last year, they were due a win I guess, but we can’t let one loss throw our season off-track (again…) even if it was to Spurs.
There’s three teams between us and third place, but only three points. Southampton, United and Spurs all still have to go to Stamford bridge, Spurs and Southampton to the Etihad too. They’ll drop points, we just have to capitalise on it.
Yeh, and also liv spu are this week and they will be both playing manu sou soon enough so there is guarantee of points being dropped and ground made up am sure. Tomorrows game cant come soon enough, would have been one of the longest weeks of my life ps i hate harry fuking kane and his obnoxious football club.
Its still f**king frustrating to think they shaved 4 points off us this season. Right now i think chamberlain is more important than walcott to this squad.
@vijaygunner
cant slate Walcott….the guy came on late in the game……Actually think, we should’ve started him and left Welbeck to cum of bench…Walcott jes started gainin form, and welbeck jes came of injury – looked very rusty apart from the one good shot…
na i meant chamberlain is more important for our pressing game. Walcott is more like a #9 for us now, he’s the kind of guy who makes intelligent runs but he’s never gonna press like chamberlain and sanchez.
The Arsenal cycle goes like this.
Wilshere Chamberlain Walcott have one
good game and fans say, “awesome”.
Then the same players have two bad games
and fans say “useless”. The players then
get injured and after a while fans say
gee can’t wait for so and so to come back.
Over the last 4 seasons these three have probably
missed 50% of games through injury.
Of the games they did play 25% were shockers and
50% were average. So less than 25% were good.
Which means these three play well in less than 12.5 %
of the teams games and half of those games were against weak opposition.
The game v relegation bound Leicester shapes as one
of these redemption games for our flat track “blooper starse ”
Awesome 🙁
Yeh but still, i was bemused that Welbz started that game. I just couldnt figure it out. Not to mention Ozil being on the other wing, if Welbz started bcos of his defensive abilities well then why have Ozil on the wing… totally unbalanced way of thinking and set up. Rosicky is or was the obvious choice as he can put his foot in and has experienced these games. Why wont our coach make changes when he sees our plans being nullified, he doesnt have to sub but something should have been done about Cazorla man marked Giroud man marked and Ozil too.
I realise that i have the benefit of hindsight but i had these fears before kick off and was cursing yelling and crying at what i was watching.
@Mick The Gunner,when you want Arsenal to capitalize on the mistakes of others that is when Arsenal will disappoint.
fans are always right…
its about time the board the manager listen to the fans….
from tactics, strategies, subs, players movements, purchases, sales etc….
things will improve if they do….
Thats just stupid, sure all fans on here are constantly at logger heads with one another. Like myself for instance, i never agree with a single word that comes from you.
this gameweek was not good but atleast manure and spuds are stil in our reach. just one huge win against leister can make us 3rd, coyg
Way to be positive dude. Arsenal and southampton to grab the champions league spots is what all of us would like anyhow. So its going to plan, eh sort of.
No use Wenger commenting now about Kane….we all knew before the game that he was Spuds most dangerous and in form player…I know Wenger insists on the Zonal marking at corners but cant we have 1 guy to atleast man mark the most dangerous opposition player…..their 1st goal could easily have been avoided.
Spuds recognised our strengths and took us out of the game…Our midfielders weren’t given any space and time on the ball…that really unsettled us.
Ozil scored a great goal, but needs to step up on our away games…drop deep, work harder like Sanchez does….
Maybe he should start showing more class in his tactics…
Oh and in finding us better players than Ramsey.
Even with an almost full squad we are still as inconsistent as we’ve ever been all season. Why? I have no idea. A champion winning side would look at the City match as say, “lets build off of it.” We clearly didn’t do that and thought spuds were just gonna lay over and play dead. Consistency is the X factor and so far only a few players have delivered week in week out.
We lost the balance of the team I could clearly see it there was something un clear to our players on the field the left wing was weak wellbeck lost position far too many times belerin was not up to scratch maybe it should have been gabrial instead of matasacker carzola tried to spray ball into left flank that went begging but also the midfield was weak perhaps there should have been 5 but the number wasn’t the real problem we didn’t do what the tots did to us all in all hope this was a good dress rehearsal for the champion league but the defence has to be more accurate to protect the goal keeper keans goals are not acceptable
‘I like the way the boss did not try to absolve the blame form Arsenal because it should encourage the players to take the responsibility for this defeat and make sure to put it right in the games coming up.’
———————-
In the same way they apparently let him down last season and then he picked then again? In the same way he has seen winnable points lost this season and then picked the same players again.
This way of absolving Wenger is a joke. He is responsible for the way in which he fails to motivate players, in the way that he continually sees his teams undone by the SAME tactics.
For years he has allowed an under performing squad to exist. He is responsible for making loan moves such as an injured Kalstrom. For failing to get the best out of a German WC winner. There is nothing to defend anymore.
We were second best. Let’s MOVE ON. It’s not the end of the world, but it would’ve been nice if Chelsea drew or lost. Let’s get the 3 points this Tuesday and make sure we are playing well before next weeks UCL game.
Class that a joke Wenger then went on to blame his team the referee the weather up his end of the pitch and the other big boys would not give us the ball. Class I don’t think so.