Last night Arsenal lost their first away game (in the League) for nine months, and it must be said that the team looked listless compared to some other performances this season. So it was interesting to hear what the Boss had to say after the game.
Both Everton goals came from headers, and Wenger was not happy about the performance of Mark Clattenberg, especially when he gave away the corner that led to the winning goal. “Of course, it was not a corner – you see it from outside that it was not a corner.” Wenger ranted. “But I think we have to live with the wrong decision and it doesn’t explain why we do not head the ball after you know. But I am really disappointed because Clattenburg was in a really good position to see that they headed the ball on and it’s not the first time we are unlucky with this decision this season. Overall, I do not want to speak about the referee too much, it’s not my problem.”
Le prof was then asked if his team let thimselves be bullied after taking the lead, and he replied: “No, I think we have to look at ourselves. We lost the game because I feel we started well and after that maybe we lost a bit of urgency because we were a bit too comfortable and then Everton made it very physical.
“Overall, I believe that from then on it disturbed our game and we created less flow going forward. In the end, we unfortunately didn’t take our chances or two. We didn’t create too many but we had clear-cut chances in the game that we didn’t take. After that you can be caught away from home on a corner like that.
“We have been nine months unbeaten away from home so you have to take that a little bit with a distance as well. You can lose football games, especially in an atmosphere like that and especially as well when you play so many games. We played five of the six games away from home, we had to play the Champions League on Tuesday, we had a difficult game on Saturday. We have to come here straight away again on Tuesday, I think Champions League teams have a little bit of a more difficult schedule.”
I am inclined to agree that the team was tired, but the question must be asked why Wenger did not rotate his big talented squad to make sure that their were fresh legs on the pitch. We did it last week and it worked well, so I am at a loss as to why Wenger played exactly the same team, except for starting Bellerin, that played against Stoke at the weekend. It makes no sense to me at all.
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