Even though Arsenal are going to finish the calendar year of 2014 outside of the Premier League top four when we began the year on top of the tree, and having been knocked out of the Capital One cup at the first hurdle, Arsene Wenger has claimed that Arsenal have done very well over the last 12 months.
In an Arsenal.com report, the manager has been looking back over the year and seeing it in a very positive light. The main achievements he points to are the increase to 79 points and obviously the FA cup triumph at Wembley in May.
But the main reason for positivity in the Frenchman is that the Gunners have done all the things we have, including getting through two more Champions League groups, with an awful and terribly long list of injury problems. Without all those holding us back in the second half of last season and the first one of this, Wenger reckons we could have done a lot better and he also thinks that our bad luck on the injury front must have run its course.
He said, “Overall it [has been] a positive year, because we made 79 points last season and won the FA Cup. In the Champions League, we went out against Bayern unfortunately. But overall I think it was a positive year.
“This season, we’ll see where we get. But I think we are some points short of what we could have achieved. It’s time to catch back the points that we lost now until the end of the season.
“I feel it is nearly impossible that we will have the same bad luck on the injury front that we had in 2014. What is explainable in 2014 is that we had many players injured because they played in the World Cup.”
The boss thinks that things will improve from now on and although that may not be enough to really challenge for the Premier League title, he is determined to do his best and be ready if the teams above us do slip up.
Wenger said, “We will fight to be as close as possible [to the top]. We are not in a mode of calculating, we are in a mode of ‘let’s go to the next game and win it’.
“You give your best and if there is a weakness in front of you, you want to take advantage of it. I don’t know if there will be any weakness in front of us, but what I know is that we can give our best until the end of the season to have a chance to do it.
“I believe that there is a deficit between the potential we have shown and the number of points we have. That’s what we want to get right. I feel we were very, very unlucky with the injuries we got. With the number of injuries we’ve had, we have survived quite well.
“But I believe that hopefully in the second part of the season, we’ll have more stability, especially defensively, to be more consistent.”
So do you agree that 2014 was a good year for the Gunners? And will 2015 be a better one?