I have recently written a post about Arsene Wenger blaming the referees for all of our lost points and ignoring the poor form of our defenders and strikers, and as soon as I posted it I found another quote from Wenger after last night’s Chelsea game where he actually thinks the team is fantastic! Two wins out of our last 8 League games, 11 points from a possible 24 – and all we ever hear about is how the referees are biased against us.
This is the quote I found on Arsenal.com: “I felt we had a very good performance [as a team]. I knew that the last 20 minutes could be difficult because we played three games in six days. The schedule was not to our advantage and also, once again, we were a bit unlucky with the decisions.
“We are a fantastic football team. I think we have seen fantastic football but there are some deeper problems and some on our side that we have to correct. At the moment, the club is really hurt hard and for me, it’s difficult to take.”
Of course he has to mention ‘the decisions’ because he likes to blame the referee for everything, but he also likes to blame the ‘scheduling’, as if Arsenal are treated harder than other clubs. Well I just checked; Since the beginning of December Chelsea have played 10 games, of which ONE was a League Cup game where they could play reserves. In the same time, Arsenal have also played 10 games, but we had a Europa League games as well as a League Cup game where we rested all our players. In fact while Arsenal played reserves against BATE, Chelsea had a crucial Champions League game against Atletico Madrid. How was our schedule worse than theirs? Do you hear Antonio Conte complaining about the ‘schedule’ or does he get on and deal with it?
In those 10 games Arsenal got W4D5L1 while Chelsea W6D3L1, that is the difference. We played the same amount of games in the same amount of time but simply didn’t perform. If Arsenal are ‘fantastic’ what does that make Chelsea?
Wenger needs to stop whingeing and take his players to task for not performing. Maybe he should be honest with the team and tell them when they are rubbish – instead of stroking their egos and calling them ‘fantastic’. Let’s address those ‘deeper problems’please.
Darren N