Wenger vows Arsenal will give full focus to Watford in FA cup

Whether Arsene Wenger chooses to rest a few first team players for the Champions League away game against Barcelona on Wednesday night remains to be seen, but judging from his comments in the press conference today reported by The Mirror, I would not be at all surprised.

The manager was perhaps responding to some comments made earlier by the former Arsenal player Paul Merson who suggested that Wenger might sacrifice the FA cup for the Champions League game even though we have next to no chance of getting through, but I think the Frenchman just realises that this cup run is very important and that we cannot take our opponents lightly.

He said, “I’m not considering the Barcelona game, I am only focused on the Watford game.

“Nobody is thinking about the Barcelona and Everton games. Everyone is focused on Watford.”

Even though the game on Sunday is at the Emirates Stadium and Watford are in the middle of a dry spell, with no goals and two defeats in the last three games, the Arsenal boss is well aware that the Hornets are dangerous opponents and even though we beat them 3-0 at Vicarage Road this season, it would be foolish to take them or progression to the next round for granted.

Wenger declared, “They have done extremely well. The Championship teams that come up now do well.”

Watford have already taken some big scalps this season, including Liverpool and West Ham, and they have managed creditable draws with the likes of Chelsea and Everton, so this is no time to be rotating too heavily and playing a second string Arsenal side, so I am glad to hear that the boss is not going to. Or is he?

Tags Barcelona

15 Comments

  1. Why wouldn’t he focus on it? It’s the only competition that’s in our own hands and the only one that we still have a chance to win.

    1. Am i dreaming it seems like we’ve been here before, oh yeah thats right it happened last season and the season before that… Oh wait guys but there is hope, if i remember corectly all we have to do is wait for any serious potential threats to us retaining the Fa cup for a third time to get eliminated by lower league opponents or of course eliminate themselves by not taking this competition too seriously by fielding their second team and laugh our way to the final where we’ll probably beat a sub par premier league team and repeat it all over again next year you know when Wenger fails to address the squad depth, the injuries mount up and are out of the champions league and title run ins by march.. seems about right?

  2. can wenger say the same bout the EPL?……… Can he make a Vow?

    Can he beat his chest and say “i’m gonna Lift that”

    see?….that’s the problem…..it’s one thing to talk, another to assemble a tactical team capable of Lifting the EPL

    Right now the FA cup is spicy and fanciful for the taking, but the bitter truth is that WE DESERVE BETTER!

    1. what part do they not believe?……… Fact that we deserve better than the FA cup or that if we had a proper organized team under an excellent managerial leadership , we could have had at least one major trophy in this past decade!

    2. The Fa cup is supposed to be a ‘portal trophy’ one that you win in order to get the taste for sucess, but when we constantly crash out of the title race by February/March and turn to the Fa cup as a measure of how sucessful you are as a team… it becomes the physical representation of an Oxymoron… in the sense that were winners and losers at the same time.

      1. @teletubbie
        Wrong. The FA Cup is the oldest football Cup competition in the WORLD…A true honor. It would be a milestone to lift it for the 3rd consecutive time after 130 years…

        1. Ohh Dont get me wrong i well and trully understand tht it would be a milestone to win it a third time but dont sit there and pretend that we didnt get lucky on our cup runs to the final, both times we faced piss easy teams, the reality is if that had been Manchester United or perhaps Chelsea we faced in the final we would have lost, because under Wenger we would have been unable to beat them in the premier league , what makes you think we would beat them in the Fa cups. Winning the FA cup has told me one thing about Wenger which is that he knows how not to get Giant killed and win a piece of silverware twice against two teams better suited to the championship.

          1. @teletubbie…huh, what are you talking about? Since we last lost in the fa cup, we have beaten Utd….and Liverpool, Everton, spuds….you can only beat what’s in front of you. Get your facts right mate. It’s piss easy as you put it when you make up who we’ve played and fantasise about how we would have lost if we’d played Utd…who we did…and unlike your imaginary fixture…we beat. Zzzzz. Reading your comment has told me one thing, you know very little.

  3. Every match is a must win until we are either mathematically out of the race or we win as there are only 9 matches left to make up the 8 points lead of Leicester. Win every match and hope Leicester/Spuds/City mess up

    I know it’s a cliche but focus on the upcoming match and focus on winning. In the past couple of weeks Welbeck,, Theo, Giroud have all scored 2 goals each. Alexis scored against Spuds. So hopefully this will start a 9 match pl winning streak which is not impossible. Very difficult but we have the players to do it.

    1. Very optimistic outlook. But the odds are not good you have to admit.

      Yes we can be champions if we win all our remaining games (something we have proven time and time again we are unable to do) and IF others around us fail (something Leicester haven’t done).

      It’s just another groundhog year at AFC.

  4. Just had a chat with Zlatan on my mobile and he said he is willing to play for Arsenal if Wenger can prove he is any good at managing by undertaking a trial!

  5. The FA cup is not even guaranteed for now as Chelsea is still in it so we have to add Chelsea to our list of teams we wish bad luck! Lol…
    Wenger has undoubtedly given the FA cup more attention because it has eased the pressure on him. Yes, it is a good cup to win but it wasn’t useful t o Wenger all these years until it saved his job…Hypocrite

  6. I am amazed that some Arsenal supporters would settle for the FA Cup this year again. It has shown the progress Arsenal has made since last year. ………none! We have been in the Champions league for 17 years in row with an appearance in one final, is that good enough for Arsenal? No it certainly is not. Not winning the BPL in years is a disgrace for a club of Arsenal’s size and history. There is only one reason for the lack of trophies over the years at Arsenal and he will be picking the team tomorrow. It’s about time he realised that he alone is the problem, do the honest thing and go.

  7. There is only one trophy that shows a teams true quality and that`s the EPL Title,( this includes the European League), the rest are very much the luck of the draw.

Comments are closed

Top Blog Sponsors