Arsenal have not been beaten by any newly-promoted sides for 34 games in a row, but they visit Brighton tomorrow who are on a great run themselves having gone six games unbeaten since they lost to Chelsea six weeks ago.
“The fact they play good football,” the Arsenal manager said. “They have a team who play quality [football] collectively. When they had a bad patch during the season, they stayed together and focused and made some surprising results.
“They have worked in a very intelligent way. They fought for many years in the Championship to come up, and a few times just missed that by a very little margin.
“They kept their philosophy, they continued to work in a rational way and, overall now that they’re up there, I believe that they will stay in the league this season and why not? They have the structure to stay for longer.”
Wenger is of the opinion that teams that come up from the Championship nowadays are a lot harder to beat than they used to be in the past. So it wuill not be so easy to keep this record for much longer.
“They are tougher, they have bigger squads [now],” he said. “The television money has given huge potential to these teams to compete on the European side, out of England they can compete and get the best players, apart from the top three or four, in every league.
“Every team who is in the second part of the Premier League table can buy the players everywhere, so when I go down sometimes to these teams, the best indication is who is sitting on the bench. You see that even in the teams in the second part of the table, you have six international players.”
I cannot help but wonder if Wenger is just praising Brighton because he truly admires them or if he is preparing an early excuse in case the gunners lose their fourth away game in a row. What do you think?
Darren N