Wenger – We were down to ten men for both Wigan goals, but the defending was horrendous

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Arsene Wenger admitted that the Gunners were awful in the second half against Wigan, but he also bemoaned the fact that Mikel Arteta’s injury left Arsenal with just ten players on the pitch when the first two goals went in although he was in no doubt that the defence was definitely at fault as well.

Wenger said after the game: We made it difficult for ourselves because we had quite a good start but we defended horrendously for the first and second goals. Everybody involved was included for the first and the second goals. On top of that we conceded a second goal with 10 men on the pitch.

It took us too much time to change and it was absolutely unbelievable. We conceded the first when Arteta was out and we could not put the player on because he is not ready. That penalised us for the second goal and after that we had a mountain to climb.

It is the fact that when a player is injured, if he stays on the pitch you have time to bring a replacement on. It was a misunderstanding because he walked off and Ramsey was not ready. The players think they will not come on in the first half, so they are not ready. Basically we played with 10 men, which should not be the case when a player is injured. Arteta had to come off but if he sits down on the pitch he can come off as well.

Wenger then went on to say that although Arsenal should have come back to equalize in the first half, the fatigue of the side came into play in the second half and they had nothing left to give.

I felt in the first half we had enough chances to come back to 2-2, but the second half we dropped our level, lost our team play, our cohesion and tried too much individually. There was not enough petrol left in the tank anymore. We didn’t see anyone who could make a difference. They defended well. We had a tremendous amount of possession but didn’t create a lot in the second half.

We have given a lot over the past two or three months and we were not sharp. Is it mental or physical? It is hard to know why. I felt in the first half we had quite a good response to being 2-0 down, but in the second half there was not a lot to come. We finished with Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Rosicky, Gervinho and Van Persie offensively and we didn’t create a lot.

Now Arsenal seriously need to pick themselves up for the big game against Chelsea next weekend, because another defeat could allow the other challengers for Third Place to get back within touching distance again.

This could prove to be a very costly defeat unless Wenger can get his team mentally and physically fit enough to get a result against a resurgent Chelsea.

Arsenal v Wigan Highlights

8 thoughts on “Wenger – We were down to ten men for both Wigan goals, but the defending was horrendous

  1. Well, that’s wenger for you. Blaming and using arterta’s injury as an excuse? How about ramseynilson ???

  2. We lost simply because of Andre santos and djourou, they both need to go. To replace them I would get Taylor of Swansea and sakho of psg we will also have Bartley to replace squillaci

  3. wenger therefore needs to manage his players properly in terms of making sure they warm up properly (i thought they did this before the game inside the stadium and to a small degree before the game on the pitch?); no excuses as tactically they should be sorted out to play with ten men (again a preparation issue for coaching); and tired?…cmon they get paid a lot of money and have jsut had time off (i can think of a lot of professions who would laugh at that in terms of the hours put in for a far far less wage). again its prepartion both mentally and physically.
    The players need to also look at themselves and challenge why they can up their game for say city but not for QPR and Wigan. Poor preparation and no strong characters to motivate.

    There are some players who clearly are not ready and some who will only be squad players. These players will need to step up as they will be the ones who will loose out if we make signings. I say if because I only expaect one or two signings if we are lucky up front and possibly in defence. We are carrying a few players and this is not an injury thing or tireness as most have not played a full season. Its that they are not good enough for a title challenge.

    players like Song who has run his socks off throughout the season deserve more credit.

  4. Wenger at fault, he should have brought on the Ox when Arteta went off not Ramsey as we needed goals and some creativity. Also being down to 10 men is very poor management by Wenger, surely he knew that Arteta’s injury was serious so why not bring a player on straight away. It was only 8 minutes in and Ramsy would have been warmed up from before the start of the game.

  5. We lost three point cos of arsene wenger sub, dis man could av introduce ox wen arteta injured or wen he sub bena instead of Gervinho, ox is very concistence in d match dan gerv cos dis guy doen’t kno anytin at all about arsenal he 2 dey cool ball while arsenal need 2 score at allcost. Pls Arsene Wenger stop bench ox for gervinho cos dis guy doesn’t kno anytin 4 head pls nd pls.

  6. Its not wengers fault, it’s the players! Arteta gets injured then just decides to stroll across the pitch towards the bench, yossi instead of staying with his man who goes on to score decides he’ll start signalling to the bench about it instead of concentrating on the game, that cost us the goal, wengers didn’t say to hobble off slowly and for other players to get involved, wenger actually criticised arteta and said he should of gone to ground, maybe play would have been stopped.

  7. Players out: Ramsey, Djourou, Walcott, Gervinho, and most of the bench to be honest. Not good enough to help Arsenal challenge for top honors. This current Arsenal side are the worst i’ve seen at the club in all my 35 years as a supporter. There’s not enough passion, drive or even talent in some of them (Gervinho). What does AW see in them and how long should it take to polish up these “so called” gifted youngsters? It’s now 7 years since we last had anything to celebrate and i fear it could be 7 more with this current squad although, RVP would surely be heading out anyway should we fail to qualify for the CL next season. I also seriously doubt that AW will be that active in the tranfer window this summer whatever happens from now till the end of the season as, has been the case for a very long time. As AW says, “We have money but, we spend wisely. If the right players are available we will look at them. We are a self-sustaining club and we manage it within our boundaries”. What this realy means is: “we like to buy cheap young players who we can sell for more later and hopefully win something along the way. Yes the fans matter because they give us their well earned cash but at the end of the day we are getting richer anyway. The opinions of our fans don’t matter so much, what is important is that the fans shut up and put up!”.

  8. 4 heavens sake. AW Shud learn to make intelligent subs. Waz up wth wenger & ramsey? Ox shud ave filled arteta space. Luk how ramsey slowed our game, Both mentally & physically. The guy is tooo weak.

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