I must say that I was impressed with Arsene Wenger’s post-match summary after the defeat to Tottenham yesterday, and it looks like he was completely honest for a change. There was no blaming the referee, or the pitch, or the weather. In fact he said that the Arsenal players were not creative enough and were lacking in confidence, which seems like a fair description to me.
This is what he said, according to Arsenal.com: “It’s a big blow [to concede two goals so quickly] but I think on the first goal we were a bit naive and that was disappointing,”
“I felt it was a tight game until they scored the first goal. After, we conceded the second one straightaway and then mentally we were under shock a little bit. From then on, it became difficult for us.
“Overall I think if you look at the chances created, Spurs deserved to win the game. We didn’t create enough, we didn’t take our chances. There was plenty of room in the first half to do more than what we did with the balls we had. That is the regret of the game today.
“I think the players really wanted it and gave everything until the end. But we lack something at the moment that is a mixture of confidence, creativity, quality to finish what we start. I think recently the team is still not completely back to the confidence level that is needed.”
And they certainly are not going to regain any confidence with performances like that! Wenger used to be great at getting his players to “bounce back” after disappointments, but it seems that that ability has deserted him, as well as the team.
So how are we going to fix this next season?