Arsene Wenger hailed his side’s grit and determination after they ground out a 1-0 win at Sunderland despite playing the last 25 minutes with only 10 men.
The Gunners could and should have been further in the lead before Carl Jenkinson’s second yellow card of the game, but with backs to the wall the boss paid particular tribute to auxiliary centre-back partnership Bacacy Sagna and Per Mertesacker and keeper Wojciech Szczesny.
“You saw that the team is up for a fight,” Wenger told press after the game. “Without that, we wouldn’t have got the three points today. Szczesny was excellent today,” he continued.
“I believe the defence was excellent, when you think that Sagna was told 15 minutes before the start that he would play centre back.
“I believe he dealt with what he faced in an excellent way. He and Mertesacker were excellent.”
In positive news, despite the excellence on show from the patched-up defence, Wenger confirmed that Laurent Koscielny’s fitness problem would only sideline him a matter of days.
“It’s a calf problem. We think it’s a question of days [until he returns] because he had a positive scan.
“He [came off for France] at half time [on Wednesday] and we decided to give him a trial in the warm up. He was not good enough. I don’t think it’s long-term.”
Reflecting on the somewhat erratic scoring patterns of late, Wenger finished by admitting that his team, particularly in attack, are still a work in progress.
“Today we lacked efficiency in our finishing and we didn’t finish what we created. We create and that’s positive. Sometimes it’s like that.
“If you look at our games, we score five, seven, and suddenly sometimes we don’t score. The team is still learning and developing and needs to be a bit more efficient.”
Not a single mention of ‘mental strength’….
Arseblog News smiles.
Seems ‘efficient’ is the new ‘mental strength’
Surely “excellent” is the new mental strength? Wenger said it four times in that article!
Any word on having the handbrake fixed?
Hope jacks okay : (
Love the picture. The head always comes out first.
… and placenta comes out last … which can be used to cure Jack?!?
Hahaha, this might be the best picture on here yet…and there have been some good ones.
agreed.
Szczesny ain’t bad-looking, but if Giroud were to give birth to a baby it would probably be better-looking than that!
Hopefully koz will be back for the Blackburn game. Let’s go on a run now. 2 clean sheets since nachos arrived, don’t remember any chances down the left hand side either he’s settling quite nicely I have to say.
there was one late in the game when sesegnon cut in, but then scuffed his shot/cross..
Nacho is settling well and its great to have 2 clean sheets in a row, but lets not put the new boy on a pedestal and rip him (and his confidence) to shreds when we do concede again.
We played Stoke and Sunderland… 2 teams which can’t and won’t attack. I like the look of Nacho but lets not get ahead of ourselves just yet. Defensive problems don’t get fixed overnight. We witnessed this early in the season already!
Top 4 is still looking within grasp. Hopefully it’ll be top three when the Chavs disintegrate…
Mixed feelings about the Everton – Man U game today. On the one hand I want Man U to lose as I can’t stand them. On the other, an Everton win puts us back into 6th and them into 5th, above us… Hmm. Difficult.
They can Draw.
Whatever happens, we need to beat sp*D’s and everton.
The Spuds game will be massive
Not a single mention you say?
United have run away with the title so prefer if they win. We play Everton & Sp*rs home & away respectively, we’ll have a better measure of where we should be after those games. Pivotal we win both for top 4 aspirations
Man U winning the league is nothing new and have got used to it by now,so def want them to win today!
I agree, in principal, but I just can’t allow myself to want them to win…. I need a shower after just thinking about it….
It would be disgusting to see Van Cunt pick up a league winners medal
Correction… WILL be. Because as disgusted as I’ll be, it’s pretty much a sure thing. Judas.
I don’t care if judas got that stupid medal as long as we beat them at the emirates.
The defence defended in an excellent manner, but the attacks attack wasn’t that excellent. Put 3 points is 3 points
In the first half the attack gelled and in the second the defence gelled.
Why is Podolski ALWAYS being rested or subbed off nowadays…? Any theories?
Tired or tires?
What do you mean nowadays, he has only completed 90 minutes once since he joined. Maybe it due to the PL being more demanding physically than the Bundesliga, and due to the fact we have other good options in his position
It’s Wenger finally rotating the squad with future fixtures in mind. Expect Podolski to play for about 70 mins against Blackburn, then taken off to be relatively fresh for the Bayern game. Expecting most of yesterday’s attacking players to be given a rest too. Probably looking at a Podolski Gervinho Chamberlain front three, assuming Gervinho is back.
There has been a blog on this. Its to do with a time space anomaly in his home village. He only played 80mins throughout childhood. It stunted the growth of his lungs… obviously!
Resting him for the bayern match. He’ll be dying to give them a good pasting.
If not for the red card I’m sure we’d have seen Podolski on the 70th minute or so, just to make the Sunderland defense’s job a bit harder just as they were getting tired.
If not for some wish to give DIaby a run out, I’d have brought him on when Wilshere went off.
Yup, he was stripped off and warming up if I recall correctly.
Tho it was 330am so I may have been delusional lol
The boss is saving Poldi for CL games. Bayern is coming up fast. No one know Bayern better than Poldi. And Poldi have been used sparingly since the biginning after all
Rocketshoes need a longer charging time than other shoes..
The Cazorla/Arteta/Wilshere dimension is UNBELIEVABLE – now THAT’S how you do the Tikki Takka…!
i think you can easily add ramsey to that triplet
back in the centre hes been playing superbly well.
I know Ramsey is the most polarizing player around here. And he played well as makeshift cover for Jenks. But he also had an awful give away (about 57 or 58 minutes) before Jenks got sent off that gave Sunderland their best chance at full strength.
Cazorla and Wilshere are still several cuts above Ramsey.
It’s clear that Cazorla and Ramsey are less suited to the wing than the middle. Ramsey gets a ridiculously high number of touches when he plays at the base of midfield because he is always running to show for the ball. His distribution is better, it seems as well. (Do the numbers back that up? Anyone? Bueller?) Likewise, Cazorla is much more influential when he’s attacking from center midfield than the wing. Cazorla, Arteta, Wilshere, Ramsey, Diaby, Coquelin. That’s 6 for 3 places, and I’m not sure that more is required but time for these guys to gel as teammates.… Read more »
What about Rosicky!
Yes, there is definitely more steel and determination to this arsenal side.. With us missing chances, losing wilshere to injury and jenkinson to red card it could have been easy to lose 2 points but we hang in there with makeshift defence..
Its been a long old season so far but at last it looks like we are finding our form. Traditionally February is the month it all falls apart for us but we have developed a bit of steel and bite and the players are finding a bit of form. For me Bayern are beatable and I think we are due a big result. I’m feeling really optimistic about the rest of the season.
Thats the spirit
that’s 😛 sorry! *squeeky voice*
Starting to look strong now. A good draw in the cup and hell we might just win something.
Did I miss us winning a cup game or something? Blackburn will be dangerous opponents. Appleton has brought them together and if the tie is taken lightly we will get spanked
After taking Bradford City lightly and being beaten i reckon we might be a bit more alert in this cup. We did win at Brighton didnt we not an easy game didn’t take them lightly and got a result. I’m not being arrogant i said might
wenger would rather play arshavin at CB in place of the squid if those were the only options left. its painful.
Arshavin might actually be a better option at Center back 🙂
They might even let him play in stilts
I can hear the commentary now:
“With their injury problems, Arsenal are having to do a bit of balancing act at the back….”
Sure there were heart stopping moments during the second half with sunderland throwing everything they could at the lads. There’s a fine line between desperate defending and determined defending. What got me charged up was watching them defend with confident determination as if some ghost of comical slip ups had finally been exorcised. I’m not sure if it’s the partnership of Sanga and Mertesaker or something they’ve been doing on the training ground. Whatever it is, more please.
As if we practice defending in training….only joking fellas..
Sagna and Raised were LANS yesterday
Monreal, too… oh wait, he’s just ANS.
Ramsey seems to be gaining his dribbling boots back, as well as passing boots. Now all he needs is his shooting boots.
Seem to remember a lot of thumbs downs when i said Ramsey could potentially be as important to our team as Wilshere. He was bloody important yesterday wasn’t he?
We have been a side of two halves this season. Now the 2nd half (of the season) is here and we look ready to really turn it on. From here it only gets better.
Anyone else felt a certain amount of dread when you read the part – ” I don’t think it’s long-term.”
Knowing our luck he may be out for a long while and I fear the same could be applied to Wilshere. I just hope and pray that they’re both back for the Bayern match.
[…] Read More Here: Wenger: The team is up for a fight […]
didn’t read article LOL
BUt we should be competing for the title not fighting for fourth place!
LOL!!!!!
*facepalm
The article is about fighting in games, not talking about the league table. Although what you say is true, we have not spent as much recently due to funds allocation towards paying off the stadium. Now that is basically over, i believe we will see an increase in player purchases to add to our already quite talented first team. IMO the only thing we lack, is depth and alternatices in defence and attack. We have plenty of talent in the middle of the park, although i wouldnt mind just one big strong midfielder like fellaini, but the attacking flair of… Read more »
Yes we are better in the second half of the season because we are
playing for third or fourth place. Then when we qualify for Europe again we are happy and we say now with a couple of good signings we can compete for trophies next season. But we have been saying that for nine years now.
any update on Koscielny and Wilshere injuries?
[…] 来源：[Arseblog News] […]
The annual ‘will we come 4th or not’ phase of the season. Would be great to be wondering about the title for a change. Maybe next season.
Watching Van Judas score yesterday and go 12pts clear of Man$hitty made me sick! But thanks to Joe Hart’s butter-fingers, we are only 9pts behind $hitty for 2nd place. What every Gunner fan wants to see is PROGRESS from the prior year, and despite relinquishing the Premier League title for the 8th consecutive year, we still have these to look forward to: EPL: 3rd-place last year, 2nd-place this year? CL: knocked out by AC Miilan in last-16 last year, 3-2 victory over Barcelona in the Final at Wembley this year? FA Cup: knocked out by Man$hitty last year, 2-1 victory… Read more »
that would be bloody marvellous!
we were knocked out by sunderland
People are getting carried away yet again. I’m happy we kept 2 clean sheets but let’s not get carried away and think we are solid defensively now. People make snap judgements over a couple of games. At the start of the season everyone came to the conclusion that we were a new solid team with Bouldy because we kept 3 clean sheets (2 of those were also against the attacking might of Stoke and Sunderland). Then we proceeded to start letting lots in again. So, I find it silly that people are excited with 2 clean sheets against Stoke and… Read more »