Before Saturday’s game against Middlesbrough, Arsenal were on a scintillating winning run which culminated in the 6-0 thrashing of Ludogorets last Wednesday, but although Le Prof made a few changes for that ECL Group Match, our manager believes that it was a game too far for his tiring squad.
“We’ve lost games like that,” Wenger said. “We are in a position where we’ve come out of [seven] straight wins. We didn’t win but before we maybe would’ve panicked a bit and lost the game.”
The boss doesn’t believe his team were overconfident or complacent, just little bit lacking in energy compared to our opponents. “I don’t feel that is the case in training, that the players become complacent.” he continued. “Sometimes you’re a bit jaded physically, but we had to dig deep to get things going.
“Unfortunately when you play against teams like Middlesbrough, they watch the Champions League games on television and they are ready physically for the weekend. It’s not easy.”
The boss then must surely make many changes for our League Cup match against Reading tomorrow, so as to give our tired stars a chance to recover for the next League game at Sunderland next weekend, although our manager is keen for us to get back to winning ways against the Championship side. That’s our target,” he told Arsenal.com. “We have a game on Tuesday night so let’s come back to winning habits straight away. It’s [about] how you deal with disappointment and how you bounce back and I believe that the group is strong enough.
“We lost the first game here against Liverpool and after that we bounced back in a very strong way so that’s what we want to do again.”
“We had 75 per cent possession but we couldn’t finish enough our combination play,” he added. “We lacked a bit of speed and freshness in what we started, and at the end of the day it was a frustrating nil-nil.
“At least we were intelligent enough not to lose it though, because in the first half we were under threat a few times. At the end of the day we got the point, it is not enough, of course, but it is still a point.”
The interesting thing is that Tottenham, Man City also dropped points which has now left it extremely close at the top, with us, Liverpool and Chelsea making five clubs all clustered at the top with just one point separating us all.
This season is getting very interesting, but is it so important for our reserves to beat Reading tomorrow?
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