Arsene Wenger is entering a crucial week in his efforts to leave Arsenal on a high, and we have the daunting task of two games against Atletico Madrid with a small visit to Old Trafford in between. Wenger has challenged his players to win every game from now to the end of the season, and the players have poured out their hearts and said they will do their utmost to give the boss a great send off.
But now they need to forget all that and go out on the pitch and do the job, as Aaron Ramsey said: “It’s a massive motivation, to put the emotional side to one side and use it to go on and win this trophy for him.
“It’s going to be weird next season when he’s not here but for now he is, and we have to finish the season off as strongly as possible. You’ve seen with the amount of fans that turned up on Sunday, and the noise they produced when they got right behind the team, and hopefully they can give him the send-off he deserves.
“We all sort of knew that one day he was always going to step down as manager, and that day has come and it was a massive shock to the team.
“But we have to put those emotions behind us and use it as motivation as well to finish off the season strongly, and hopefully we can lift something for him and let the other emotions come in after that when the season is finished. Then we’ll go from there.”
As has been pointed out earlier if they had tried their hardest in other games, maybe Wenger wouldn’t be in this position right now, but Danny Welbeck also thinks that they should want to win the competition whatever the situation is with Wenger. He was asked if the lads were setting out to do it for the Boss. “Yeah.” he said. “Going into a semi-final in a European competition, you don’t need any extra incentive to win the game. I wanted to win the game before the manager announced he would be leaving, and I want to win it after. With the lads, everyone’s focused on winning the tie but obviously at the end of the competition, there would be that icing on the cake to see the manager lift the trophy.”
So let’s forget all the wenger-talk for the 90 minutes of tonight’s game and just encourage the players to go out on the pitch and play their very best and give the fans something to cheer about for a change…
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