Is Wenger kidding about Arsenal team and tactics?

It is not exactly like Arsene Wenger to give his rival managers any sort of help in working out how Arsenal are planning to play ahead of a match, especially a match as important as the one against the Premier League leaders Leicester City on Sunday is.

But that is exactly what the Frenchman has done, on the surface at least, in today’s pre-match press conference reported by The Mirror. As the boss gave the latest update on the injury situation and the Arsenal team news, he also declared that he would not be making any changes to the starting line up of he could help it.

Wenger said, “A similar squad to last week.

“Still 48 hours to go and two sessions, but hopefully we’ll keep the same team.”

Not only that, the prof also praised his rival manager Claudio Ranieri and revealed that the Gunners would be trying to employ the same sort of possession based football that has been our trademark under Wenger4 for years, even though he was well aware of the threat that the Foxes possess with their pace and ability to hit teams with their counter attacking style.

He said, “The first game we played against them, it was a very open game.

“It’s true they’re very quick in transition. We need to nullify that pace.

“We want to have the ball, dominate and be dangerous.”

Now call me suspicious if you like, but I have to question the motives and also the honesty of our manager here. Is he trying to kid the Leicester boss with these ‘revelations’ about the Arsenal team and tactics for Sunday? And if so, does he really expect the wily old Italian to fall for it? Maybe Wenger is doing the old double bluff and planning to do what he says while expecting Ranieri to plan for the alternative?

What do you think Gooners? Personally I would be happy to see the same starting XI, with the possible change of the extra pace and energy of Coquelin instead of Flamini. How about you?

Tags Coquelin Flamini

16 Comments

  1. I don’t even want to see Mertesacker and Flamini on the bench, let alone in the starting 11 for Sunday’s game.
    Trust me… We will all sense the outcome of this game,
    as soon as we see the team-sheets before kick off.

    We know more about what’s on the Moon and Mars than we know about what’s on Wenger’s mind! ?
    So don’t even bother going there… ?
    Wenger is Just Like NASA… Never A Straight Answer!

  2. Coq ahead of Flamini & Gabriel ahead of Per are both musts. Coq’s strength, tackles & energy in midfield are key & Gabriel’s pace is required to look after Vardy.
    I would go
    Cech
    Monreal
    Gabriel
    Kos
    Bellerin
    Coq
    Ramsey
    Sanchez
    Ozil
    Ox
    Giroud

  3. Well we can be pretty certain about how Sunday’s game will go. For us it’s a must win game, for them they want to keep us at arm’s length. So we’ll have possession and Leicester will try and sit back and hit us on the counterattack.

    Why am I confident we won’t lose this game? We have something Manchester City don’t – a world class defensive midfielder. Francis Coquelin’s bread and butter is slowing and stopping fast counterattacks. It’s just simply what he does. If he’s fully fit and starts, I’m comfortable.

    Whether or not we’ll score the goals to win the game is a different matter. Giroud will surely come back into goalscoring form soon. Alexis back into the team will also help create chances and Özil will hopefully find his assisting boots again.

    I think we’ll win this game. Top of the league or not, we have a better team than Leicester. We battered them 5-2 away, so we know we can beat them. As usual, it’s all down to the performance on the day…

    1. But most of you forget that was when we had Cazorla in the side, without him our midfield has no sense of cohesion, ever since his injury we’ve struggled to score freely and keep possession of the ball.

        1. our midseason softness coincided w coq’s absence. players like liverpool just waltz thru flam’s area. and dont get me started on mert. if gabriel & coq start, we’ll win sunday. we need to focus every minute: leicester can be v.fast on counterattack.

  4. Massive game on Sunday.
    Lose, we go 8 points down
    with 5 tough away games
    Win and we close the gap.
    Draw favours Leicester.
    Top 8.
    Cech Bellerin Koz Gabe Monreal Ozil Sanchez Giroud
    The other 3 choose from.
    Coq Flam Elneny Ramsey Iwobi
    Campbell OX Walcott Chambers Gibbs.
    Select the bench from whats left.
    Arsenal 3 Leicester 0

      1. No wonder Corinthians
        were 1st they had
        13 vs 11 🙂
        We could put Arteta
        and Sanogo on cause no one would notice 🙂

  5. I read some of Wengers comments earlier and was a bit puzzled. He went into some detail of how highly he thinks of Vardy and Mahrez, right before the game he goes and hypes them up as if they weren’t already brimming with confidence. Coming from him I’m sure the lads were chuffed, Id prefer if he’d said nothing or instead maybe mention how it will be interesting to see if they can keep it up from now on and over the whole of next season. Try to put some doubts into their minds instead of giving them his seal of approval. Our boss has a great understanding of language and is an all round clever dude, I know he could manipulate and coyly play with words if he really tried to and I for one would like to see a more sly side to his personality on the big occasions.

    1. All season Ranieri has
      been able to say to his troops
      that the big clubs are laughing
      at us as motivation.
      So Wenger is avoiding giving Ranieri
      any bullets to fire by complimenting Leicester instead.
      He is also avoiding any complacency from our troops
      and at the same time is firing them up
      by saying how good Leicester is.

  6. Whatever he said…it could change before kick off, eve thought I have a preferred XI in my mind like most of us (please Wenger bring Le Coq, Campbell & keep Gabriel) this is a must win for us not only because we can close the gap but also increase our margin of error. After this horrible month of January & the coming games we simply have too. Honestly if we don’t reach near perfection in February & March as we have Man U, Spurs & Everton to play we might have to say goodbye to the Prem (Victories even 1-0s). If Özil, Ramsey & Sanchez are serious about ending are drought in the league this is one of those game where they have to give it there all!!!

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