It was not just Arsenal that the manager of the current Premier League leaders Leicester City was talking about after the Foxes stretched their lead at the top yesterday, but all of the clubs hoping to beat them to the EPL title. Claudio Ranieri spoke to Sky Sports after seeing Riyad Mahrez score the only goal of the game to sink Watford.
Trying to ease the pressure on his own players while at the same time trying to increase it on those of Arsenal, Tottenham and Man City, the Italian alluded to the differences in the amounts spent on transfer fees and wages between the big clubs and his relatively inexpensive and unfancied side.
Ranieri said, “We are not nervous, our job is done and our job was to save the team. This is an amazing season for us and everything we achieve is something more.
“The others must be nervous, the others spend a lot of money to win the title. We have to build slowly, slowly.
“This year is a crazy season for us, for everybody and we are happy and we have to enjoy. We know very well this is a strange chance that we have but we want to fight and then nobody can say ‘we were nervous’. No. We are focused and everything could happen.”
Arsenal fans may well argue that the Gunners and Arsene Wenger have not been spending big money to win the title at all, and there has been a lot of anger that the boss only signed Petr Cech in the summer and then Mohamed Elneny in January, but you cannot argue that our squad cost a lot more than that of Leicester.
So does this increase the pressure on us? I don’t think so really but Wenger did admit that there was massive pressure on him and the players from the Arsenal fans, in comments reported by Arsenal.com.
He said, “I must tell you that the pressure from our supporters is relentless and I’m in a good position to tell you that. We have to deal with that. We have to go on a run again. We play on Tuesday night an important game and then we will see if we will play in the FA Cup or the Premier League. We want to win our games.”
Is there too much pressure and expectation from us fans or is it something that the Arsenal players and manager should be able to cope with?