Arsene Wenger says his players should be furious with themselves for the manner in which they lost to Manchester United yesterday, while Bacary Sagna admits the Gunners took too long to get into full stride and ultimately paid the price.
Hinting that his squad suffered a mental block at Old Trafford, a venue at which good times have been few and far between, the boss told Arsenal Player that the one-nil defeat was a harsh reflection of the game.
“We haven’t won for a while here, we were just not ourselves in the first half. In the second half we should have come back – we were honestly unlucky.
“It [the result] is unfair because we put a little bit ourselves on the back foot in the first half because we rushed our game and were too nervous.
“When we started to play we dominated the game completely and were unlucky not to score in the second half. I hope that everybody’s full of rage basically against ourselves because it’s unbelievable to lose a game like that.”
Sagna, who was Arsenal’s greatest attacking threat over the 90 minutes, also chose to focus on the poor opening 45 minutes during which Robin van Persie headed the only goal of the game.
“After playing like that during the first half, we couldn’t expect more,” he told Arsenal Player.
“The only positive today is we kept playing during the second half, we showed them we were a better team but we had to do this all through the game and we started playing too late.
“We wanted to finish [the week] on a good note, we didn’t, so it’s a bit hard to take. That is football, I think we learn about our team, about football as well.
“If we don’t give the maximum and if you lose decisive challenges you put yourself in trouble and that’s what happened during the first half.
“But I want to think positive, I want to keep looking forward, I want to think we are first and we want to stay first. The best way to do it is to respond well on the next game.”
That next game on 23 November is against high-flying Southampton and should mark the return of Theo Walcott whose pace and width has been sorely missed in recent weeks. In his wake should also come the likes of Lukas Podolski, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Yaya Sanogo ahead of a busy period leading up to Christmas. We are still top but we can’t rest on our laurels.
Yes, let’s go hulk on southampton! 15-0 anyone?
Nice thought but Southampton are probably more dangerous that Man U at the moment!
but i thought that was everton…aarrgh what is going on here? my head is gonna explode.
Soton have a great thing going on right now i’d hate to be the one to reign on their parade but we spare no one from now on. RUTHLESS MODE!
reign on their parade? clever wordplay or misunderstood phrase? I’ve seen others on here describe a player as “top draw”, which is another phrase which people have probably only heard, and heard incorrectly.
Anywho… Southhampton beat Pool at Anfield and drew with United at Old Trafford, I have not seen them play yet but I doubt it will be easy.
I’m guessing they mean top drawer rather than draw. You can hear the saying and not know the correct spelling.
Sagna you beaut.
Pissed we didn’t shut those cunts up on their home turf.
Stew on it for 2 weeks and come back going on like T1000
c’mon sagna, sign da ting. or if there is no ting get him a bloody ting to sign. he is brilliant!
I am.
One of the reason why I felt the result was bit disappointing is because man utd not at their best in the last game and we’re more than capable getting a result there.
Maybe illness and fatigue take a toll on the squad but hope they’ll bounce back as usual.
It was a loss we didn’t really deserve on the day, and one that, given a fit and healthy squad, would probably have been avoided.
All credit to TV5 for a very solid performance, but without the BFG’s verticality, we are quite exposed at set pieces through the middle. Fingers crossed him and Özil come roaring back to life after the Interlull!
Am in…
I don’t want to be negative but that first half performance was shocking. It looked like one of those games last season where we failed to impose ourselves early in the game. Anyway, it wasn’t a bad loss. We dominated the second half. Can’t wait for the game against southampton! COYG!
It was a disappointing result but I felt that united looked quite average.
I did not see the game,first one I missed in a while.When I checked sky I seen that dirty rotten dutch skunk celebrating and I thought ,that man has no class or respect whatsoever, I know adebayor celebrated too but you would expect that from a man completely consumed with himself and his bank balance, but i thought maybe just maybe rvp would have some respect, if not for Arsenal or us gooners, then Arsene Wenger, the man who made him what he is in football.He would have gotten paid by man utd whether he celebrated or not,but he chose… Read more »
“Dont forget Bendtner made it as a footballer. impossible is nothing….”
He made it as a footballer? I thought he had given up on football and become a samurai.
became*
or maybe *become was okay.
whatever it is, it’s unbecoming!
Maybe some extra training sessions on HOW TO JUMP!!!! that pathetic attempt at a goaline clearance by gibbs was a joke and he cost us that goal my granny could have jumped higher! Watch the replay!
Wow, i didn’t know Gibbs was supposed to cover the post and van Persie at the same time……
What were the other defenders doing at this point because they must have all been really busy if Gibbs was at fault?
looked to me, and i may be wrong, like gibbs saw something dangerous and couldn’t get some1 else to cover it and had to try and multi-task
Watch the replay. Yeah right I would rather have all my nails removed with pliers!!
OMG Hahahahahaah!
Send us a vid of your granny jumping and I’ll then decide!
on rooney??
wow! there is something about wenger this season, he is not afraid to tell his players when they perform badly..ruthless eh! thats the winning spirit man! Come on wenger!
Give Sagna a new contract please!
We have probably offered one but I don’t think he is keen at the moment. A league title should bring him round.
Emenike of Feneberche FC is a sure bet for Arsenal, go for him Wenger, he’s strong, tall, posesses good technics and he’s also an Arsenal fan, he’s idols are Kanu Nwankwo and Henry, bring him to Arsenal for just £12mil and make loyal Arsenal fans from West African happy after the botched pre-season trip to Nigeria and increase your fanbase in Africa, cos I also became an Arsenal fan when Kanu and Regobert Song use to wear the red and white of Arsenal.
i belive rigobert ‘regobert’ song used to wear the red of mugsmashers not arsenal.
Ummmm…… Rigobert has never played for Arsenal. He played for Liverpool during the 1999-2000 season and then West Ham during 2000-2002.
Maybe you saw him wearing an Arsenal shirt in the street once.
I’m guessing you meant Alex Song who is his cousin
isn’t Alex his nephew?
Alex refers to him as his uncle but they are in fact cousins. Fun fact.
Again with the FIFA signings. Just because someone is god on FIFA doesn’t mean they are in real life. He’s also 5ft11″ hardly the tallest. Not proven in any league of any significance either. Looked awful against us in CL qualifiers too.
Not FIFA, but football manager; Kurt Zouma…
Lol. This guy is retarded
We are alright boys. It’s only bad because of all the crap the stupid pundits like alan hansen are saying…
Back on tele was he? Noticed last week when we stuffed his beloved bin dippers he was absent from our screens.
but i still think the “BuG” played a big part in our performance not that united pressed more or were better than dortmund or even liverpool, its just Lucky united. But we would have gotten atleast a draw if we had some one like chicharito(complete goal poacher) in place of bendtner when sagnas cross was begging for a decent contact.
I hope we buy a top striker in January.
You can count on me, guys. Go team!
Shut up Nick
That definitely is not TGSTEL cos he’s supporting his team!
Go.
Nick.
I thought this post was about the Dutch Skunk, the cunt!
But hey! Why the bendtner? Thought i saw park around this team and he looked far decent to be sincere
Also i have to say that ozil AND gibbs should have shown MORE desire to head that ball in the net when in the 6yard box GIBBS DUCKED OUT THE WAY! Ozil didnt even try to head the ball in the net! Also lacklustre passing and lack of desire to win the ball back ultimately cost us rooney chased EVERYTHING down! CMON LADS FOCUS!!!!! we cant let our run fizzle out COYG!!!!
A very poor man united side took three points from us and i am so angry with the result.The good things is this season we have seen how strong our players, their mental strength to deal with a defeat and come back stronger is well proven.At any cost,we are still the best team in the EPL. I had enough of the poor finisher Bendtner and i really hope not to see him in the first team again.Let’s hope AW will bring a proven goal scorer(fox in the box ) during January transfer window.Walcot,podolski,chamberlain and sanogo when are you coming back???… Read more »
Van pussie is a c#nt
And I’m a fat one…
Good stuff, need to bounce back in the next game. Southampton are a good strong outfit but we have enough in us to win it.
Walcott will live playing with Ozil and Cazorla, a goal a game young man
I didn’t buy a paper today. I never do after a game like that. I had a quick peek at some of the online opinions though and most aren’t too bad.
I know that links are not popular here, but I thought that this was quite encouraging:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/mark-lawrenson-arsenal-still-title-2718955
There are question marks over the Wenger’s team selection and substitutions at times. this is a game we would have easily won but we threw away. I hate it when we lose against Man u because we always are the better side but they always find a way of beating us.
I really like new-age Wenger. He spent so much time over the years protecting players and they kept letting him down. It seems like he’s finally had enough of pandering to their fragile natures and is basically telling them to man up.
Hopefully they all feel like they’ve let themselves, Arsene and the fans down and will pick themselves up and batter all-comers.
Just read Robbie “average” Savage article on BBC. How a below par Man U beat Arsenal. This guy is a total fuckwit. I can’t wait till may, when wenger stuffs the league trophy up his massive nostril, and then gives him a boys haircut.
Don’t bother with Savage. He’s so full of shit that Toshack decided to pick players from the lower divisions infront of him.
So we lost.still top.time for some perspective here.podolski,Theo out for weeks,we just played 3 very tough teams but top PL and our CL groups still.other main rivals all dropped points this weekend.we aren’t dropping points like last season to small teams so I’m still confident.it’s only November.any fan at August would have laughed if yo told them we were top of table with 5 point lead over Scum.yesterday bee was a bump on a long road
That meant to say yesterday was a bump on a long road
So after our toughest week, where the majority of pundits and the media claimed we be lucky to come out with a draw against one of the teams, we still ended up top of the league and top of our CL group.
This really has been a terrible week…….
I honestly thought that we were going to show them what football is all about. Instead, we did a perfect
presentation of football being played by retarded hyenas! Obviosly the block is still there, although not the same manager, not the same circumstances and not the same attitude by them. It honestly hurt me the way the gloryhunter mugs were singing, you know? Like owning Arsenal i quite regular… And my bouys fell for it. Really dissapointing… (Oh, and I don’t care about the previous fixtures, they turned up for this match, we didn’t!)
sometimes i feel like Wenger just makes life difficult for himself. as much as guys might love Rambo,the guy needs a breather. he was at fault for the goal and i didn’t think he had a good game. what is the use of having players on the bench if you don’t use them? Gnabry, the few times he has come into the game, has shown that given an opportunity he can change games for us. he can run at defenders and packs a powerful shot. Does he have to wait till the 70th minute to make a change?
Exactly. And to play Arteta with an illness? But what’s done is done. Even the champions can lose to a mediocre midtable team! We can’t win ’em all! I’m a bit frightened by Southampton to be honest. The guys really need a breather…
Every time the injuries or flu hit the team we get the bad result if the team played that bad at dortmund surely the c/lge would have been beyond the teams reach, it was a different team playing at liverpool & dortmund this is why the team lost to utd, but keep up the good team work each game & we will beat the bad results coyg
One of the most frustrating things about yesterday was the lack of quality on the bench. At the end of the last transfer window I was slagged off for saying that I was disappointed with Wenger’s failure to add depth to the squad; yesterday proved just how right I was. Instead of that waste of space who is Nicholas Bendtner, wouldn’t it have been nice to have someone like Loic Reme to come off the bench? He looked terrific at Spurs yesterday. And how about Victor Moses instead of the inexperienced Gnabry? Both those players could have been snapped up… Read more »
I don’t actually agree with this. When all our injured players are back, then we have depth in a number of positions. You can’t go out and buy a load of players just in case some get injured as this would just cause problems later on with players complaining about not getting picked. Also, Gnabry has looked good when he has come on or started. How do you think players get experience to play at this level if we’re not going to pick them? Moses hasn’t exactly lit up the footballing world at Chelsea or Liverpool, so he may not… Read more »
“when all our injured players are back” when will that be? hopefully before December. we all know how 2-3 weeks can turn into 4months or 6 or the whole season. If we had a hungry no 9, we would have won the game in the second half yesterday. But i concur with you on Gnabry and i wish he could get more game time.
Grant Holt is a hungry no.9, but I don’t see how that would improve us!!!
suarez is a hungry no 7
Podolski, Walcott, Chamberlain, Rosicky would have been on the bench/pitch. Sanogo and Gnabry are for the long term. Unlike you, Wenger can not think only of the next 90 minutes, or next 10 games. I am grateful he doesn’t.
This result was not the end of the world in light of the Chelsea, Tottenham and Man City results. I don’t think there was much more Gibbs could have done for the goal short of using his hands. And unlike a lot of the rest of the team, at least he actually tried to get into their penalty box.
We improved in the 2nd half but still didn’t do enough to honestly claim that we deserved a draw.
We are still in a good position, as long as we come back stronger.
Why is tottenham in there? Surely Newcastle winning is a bigger threat for us.
Dr baptiste of course it was gibbs’ fault HE was the 1 standing on the line if he had jumped crossbar height he would have stopped the ball crossing the line!
So those players who were supposed to be picking up van Persie weren’t at fault at all? Jesus, who knew we had to rely on one man to make sure we didn’t concede…..
Actually due to the Zonal system no one was actually supposed to pick him up so technically you have to blame the coaching staff.
personally I think it should be a mix of zonal/man marking. Mark the three most dangerous headers of the ball then zone the rest.
‘..if he had jumped crossbar height’
This is one of the most beautiful phrases I have read on this site yet. Next up Gibbs can jump his own way home..?
Immediately i saw Wenger in that big whatever he was wearing over his suit i knew it was not gonna go well cos anytym he tries zipping it and he struggles with it we loose matches….anyway MUFC needed the 3 points than we did…we will bounce back in grand style…we are on top gunners
I felt a bit like that when I saw the yellow away strips. Irrational I know. Could be worse, we could have gold away strips. Like we might next season.
Haven’t heard a peep from so called Chef Sports Writer of the Sun, Steven Howard for weeks while we’ve been on top. As soon as RvP nodded in that goal I knew ole Stevie H would be getting an erection and thinking of new ways to slag us so much so that I went to the bookies and bet my house on it. True enough, got a copy of the rag this morning and there was the twat, right on cue, saying all sorts of bollocks. I can only surmise that an Arsenal fan ran off with his wife years… Read more »
Here’s a Stevie H classic! http://www.anorak.co.uk/291885/sports/the-suns-steve-howard-tries-to-kick-arsenal-manager-arsene-wenger-and-misses-horribly.html/
I couldn’t help but read the hate filled rants on ANR. Anyone would think that we are in the relegation zone the way some of the readers carry on there. If we’re top of the league and “fans” ares till claiming that Wenger doesn’t know what he’s doing, I wonder what they’d be like if they supported any other club in the league?!?!
I think it is totally right for Arsene and fans to be annoyed with the performance, regardless of illness. If we want to win this league we have to be ruthless and professional. United were there for the taking and a lot of the players didn’t show up. Shame on them.
I still think this squad is a little bit unbalanced, even with Walcott, Pod and Ox back. We have a lot of back up in midfield but centre half and forwards could do with strengthening.
If we dont win a major trophy this season than it should Wenger’s final season. Bring someone who can win us a few trophies.
We should be angry. Seldom to we have the opportunity to kick them when they’re down, it’s normally the other way around. A real 6 pointer for them, could have been 11 points and then the pressure’s really on Moyes. We should have come out like Trojans (yeah I know Illness etc..) Instead it’s 5 and we never even truly played and it’s the same old none performance at OT.
Galling
I know alot of you will disagree with me, but i think we can do better than Giroud. For all his flicks and all, his finishing is just not good enough. We need a striker and fast. This jan will be hard to get a world class one, but i wouldn’t mind bringing in benzema. I know people think he’s overrated, but he’s skillful and i dare say, a better finisher than Giroud. Diego Costa would be my first choice alongside Suarez. Whatever mental block we have against man u needs to be sorted out. We lost to a crap… Read more »
We just got rid of one rapist, we don’t need to bring in another!!
The players shouldn’t be angry at themselves for conceding a goal from set-piece. They should be angry at whoever suggested using Zonal Marking.
I hate Zonal Marking.
It’s amazing how some people analyse every goal and assume its someone’s fault. Rvp scored a great goal that’s it.
I dont think that we should be raging at all. The game was at Old Trafford. Yes we were more than capable of thrashing those cunts, but look at the chances we got and what team we are playing. Next week I doubt that Man u could win at Cardiff and Arsenal have a good chance to end the great optimisation feeling at Southampton. COYG!!!
Looking forward to Theo coming back – he provides another whole dimension to our attack
Hope the players are not getting too emotional abou sunday. Yes its united. Yes its van persie. Yes we wanted to win… but look at what we have achieved so far this season. We can win this league! I’ve seen enough to believe that! This team can do it. So we lost 1-0…and what? Lets dust our shoulders off and move on.
I have to speak my mind the truth is we choked thats all there is to it we never win there our very best opportunity to do so and we wont mentally strong we have a inferiority complex against them. I cant see us winning the keague after this peformace when it comes to squeeky bum time we wont have the mentality needed to get over the line like in recent years. Wenger must be furious it was a must win game no excuses we could of gone 7 points clear of chelsea. I will make full judgement at the… Read more »
O Great Jason, just who cares about your judgement??
Full of poisoned skunk meat more like.
DISAPPOINTING
We could have kept distance to Liverpool and stretched the lead over Chelsea.
Instead we put in an insipid shift first half.
Don’t think we can use midweek as an excuse. Granted United had to play Sociedad only, it was still a competitive match.
We were ultimately not sufficiently switched on.