Arsene Wenger admits his side looked nervous going forward but praised Manchester United for a stubborn defensive performance.
Arsenal created very few clear cut chances throughout the game and while things opened up a little more in the final fifteen minutes the Gunners couldn’t find the cutting edge that might have seen them snatch three points.
Speaking to the press after the 0-0 draw, which leaves Arsenal in second place in the table, the boss reflected:
“I felt we were nervous, yes. Where we are usually very dangerous breaking through the middle with speedy passing, Man United defended very well there. we got plenty of crosses in and their experienced players, people like Vidic and Ferdinand in the second half, did very well with that.
“When we tried cut backs they defended well because they had Carrick, who has a lot of experience as well. Man United is a good team who can play against anybody in our league. At the moment they are not where they can be, but you cannot say with the players they on the pitch that they are not quality. They are quality.”
Accepting that the 5-1 defeat on Saturday at Anfield played a part in his side’s tentative forward play, the boss continued:
“We care about what we do and when you concede five goals like we did on Saturday, we are only human beings and that is always what you get after a game [like that]. Sometimes you don’t score because the team was highly focused not to concede today.
“Tonight it [the handbrake] was on, but I think it will [come off]. When you are hit like we were on Saturday, the players want not to lose the game and we could have lost it in the last five minutes.
“We have come out two difficult games and are still in a strong position. That is the only positive. We had two bad results, but we are still in a position where we can do it.”
Not the handbrake, we’r not doing the handbrake again please?!
When he starts on the ‘had brake’ cliche – you really want to scream. What this shows – again – is that Wenger’s grasp of tactics is close to zero. He sets up to play one way only and when it doesn’t come off, against the better sides, we go nowhere. It isn’t just that he’s completely unable to counter Mourinho. But he’s even being caught out by lesser figures like Brendan Rogers, who could see our left flank weakness and overran it, leaving Wenger offering nothing by way of a riposte. Our continuous failure against the bigger teams also… Read more »
soooo tired of hearing that nervous statement – fuck, you play them every year twice a year get over it and go for it…
*Sigh* I’m just so tired of not being able to win against Man U, even when they have a bad team and are playing at their worst.
We were indeed. Nervous, slow, clueless and frustrating. Giroud needs a rest and we need a striker to replace him.
Man U were defending very deep, they closed down our game and as usual we didn’t have anyone running behind the defences.
Very frustrating defeat not helped by stupid spur caller on talksport who think they will finish 3rd and us 5th.
Arteta is off form. He was our best player last season bar Cazorla.
We need FLamini back for a while. Or maybe give Vermaelen a run there.
Captain Verm at DM sounds good to me.
I actually thought Arteta had a really good game. It wasn’t in defence that we looked poor, it was in front of Arteta: Wilshere was desperately poor, Cazorla and Rosicky nervous, Giroud looked spent and needs a rest.
Flamini has himself to blame. Stupid tackle at a crucial moment in the season.
Ramsey’s the real missing one though.
Giroud was literally bent over double by the 80th minute, too exhausted to track back and obviously too exhausted to make any particularly clever runs that might have got us a late winner. He’s not clinical at the best of times, when his work-rate’s gone he’s below average. Here’s the thing, though – compare Giroud to Drogba and you get a remarkably similar pattern of goals scored versus matches played. I don’t have access to goals per shots, so I don’t know their relative efficiency. In that broad pattern, though, Giroud’s development is on track – he’s quite likely to… Read more »
You had my attention until you started ranting with the caps lock on.
It wasn’t that we didn’t have the players to beat Man Utd. We simply didn’t have the spirit. You can’t buy that.
And because we didn’t have the spirit, we didn’t have the confidence. It’s all good about the clean sheet, but a supposedly title contender team, drawing at home, passing backwards in OT? That has nothing to do with the rival, that’s entirely on us.
Here’s hoping we’re playing against the fun size versions of Liverpool and Bayern Munich.
Well said. you could ease off the caps though. Still, well said. We’ve sat through a lot, so let us stay with it till the end of what has been a largely positive season unlike the last couple.
Sorry I mean draw not defeat although it felt like that.
I repeat this again, arsenal are seriously unlucky, check this out. We played a man city side with both aguero and fenerdinho fit, I mean we played a complete man city team on the other hand, chelsea played a city team deprived of aguero,nasri and fenerdinho and then kompany(in the first leg), we played a united team with rvp,rooney and mata while chelsea played a united team without Rvp and rooney even mata too, we played a SAS liverpool, chelsea played a liverpool with only suarez, And we didi all this without many key players in some of the games,… Read more »
And we are only 3 points ahead of liverpool.
Which means we are ahead of Liverpool.
No. I go by how smug Hansen looks on MOTD and trust me, Liverpool are uncatchable at top.
As manager it’s Wenger’s job to ensure that the team head out with no nerves. It’s his job to ensure that we take the handbrake off. If the team is nervous, it’s filtering down from the top. No substitutions proved Wenger was more afraid of losing this match than ambitious to win it. He needs to remove the shackles of fear that constrain him when it comes to big matches. It’s been a great season but we’re still as much in a dogfight for top 4 as we are in the title race. He took a chance not replacing Ramsey… Read more »
Hear, hear.
Agree completely with your analysis.
The introduction of Gnabry and Podolski – hell even Bentdner – could have gone a long way helping us, especially in the last 20 minutes when Cazorla Ozil and the full-backs were carving them open.
When teams parked the bus we had walcott to run in behind and be sort of a threat now with him out. we find it hard to stretch opposition naf thats why we are scoring less goals or even never scoring.
I knew his absence would have a bearing on out title push….and its clear now he’s one of our most important assets. wont even begin on how big Ramsey been missed….
Dissapointing week.
AW please don’t give excuses as usual for your lack of activity in transfer market for a striker
These games show how badly we missed higuain and suarez in transfer window. Giroud really needs some rest. Even he is a human.
Another trophyless year is imminent
I hope the nerves settle soon as I thought we looked like we are slowly running out of steam, while the teams behind us are picking up the pace.
I really hope I’m wrong and that spark returns, but I’m getting very worried that we have fucked it.
We missed having Walcott this evening.
Agreed but we are desparately missing the best footballer Wales has to offer.
FFS are there any doctors/scientists/physicists out there who can inject a kilogram of stem cells into Aaron Ramsey’s groin and make it heal already?!
Well I must be the only one but I thought we played ok tonight – Ozil was much better thank God. I guess I just had nightmares of some grey haired judas scoring a stoppage time winner and giving the media yet more ammo for their “Arsenal falling apart” agenda – at least that didn’t happen. I’ll take a point against Man U happily enough – Moyes is having a bad start but any team with Mata, Rooney and RVP in it is going to be able to hurt you. As it was we contained them well and probably should… Read more »
It’s wenger thats nervous.
no wonder he has trouble zipping his coat up.
(Forget nails… He has no finger tips left)
Wenger is a cunt, taking all the large salary and screwing the fans, hope he dies otherwise wel’ll never get rid!
calm the fuck down. and be careful what extent you go to just because you are sitting there with a keyboard on your dick.
The team was extremely cautious today, and I dare say I found nothing wrong with the approach. We had a go in the second half of the game, and were it not for some great stops by De Gea, and some mind bugling misses by us, thing would have been different. We played a United side with all their best players from the title winning squad of last season on the pitch including Chelsea’s best player over the last two season and dare I say we were on top of the game for long periods with a team without two… Read more »
I agree with you. But it does raise questions on why we would have only one of such a vital player. Why did we let go of Gervinho? Why didn’t we get another quick player in over the summer or winter windows? You can’t have it both ways. Injuries will come and it’s the manager’s task to mitigate the risk associated with them. If Giroud got injured, I bet you would be here saying the same exact thing for Giroud as you have said for Theo. Meanwhile every other team competing for this title has more than 1 player who… Read more »
If Giroud gets injured now, our only like for like replacement is Bendtner who isn’t of the same quality as Giroud. If you look at how the manager has used Walcott when fit, you will see that he sees Walcott as the second striker in the team, that striker who can unlock defenses like the one we faced yesterday. We should not get carried away by the good start to the season as we are still a team punching above our weight and do not have the luxury of being able to sign good players on ridiculous wages just for… Read more »
Funny enough I wasn’t one of those on Gervinhos back. I could understand why fans wanted him to leave but the talent was so obvious. He just needed a little tweaking. I wanted him for just one more year. Also, people tend to forget, Gervinho played more minutes at centre forward than Podolski and performed better in that position. I recognised that.
So, all in all, Gervinho had the ability to do two jobs we currently require. I knew this and I was expecting a winger and a striker in summer to make up for those positions.
The biggest failing of our glorious club over the last 8 seasons has been the utter arrogant and stubborn mismanagement of the transfer market.
Tonight is echoing just how absolutely vital buying a striker was/is. Giroud, for all his hard work has not been playing well lately and that essentially has us playing with 10 men. Ozil, a world class pass master is handicapped massively without mobility in front of him.
Arsene, your place is cemented in our history and we love you, we respect you, we thank you but it’s time to move upstairs.
We weren’t nervous, we were shit!!!
Be intresting to see what team Wenger selects on Sunday, hopefully they’ll go into the game without fear with only the thought of dumping the dirty scousers out the FA Cup.
This was the Chelsea match redux. Everybody was too afraid to lose. To all those bitching about subs, if Wenger had gone for it at the end and we had conceded (cf. Dortmund at home) you’d be going mental. Now you’re just disappointed, as we all are.
RVP looked like Reagan with his hair dye. And he’ll be playing for the Europa league at best next year, so there’s solace to be taken.
Subs are there for a reason. Transfer windows are there for a reason. Somebody tell Wenger please.
Arsene Wenger is Arsene Wenger for a REASON…Though am disappointed with our teams performance last few games…i still think v can do it this season…#OneArseneWenger
We really need to improve our record against the bigger teams. I know winning consistently against the lower sides is the bedrock of any title challenge but with so many teams competing for the title and top 4 we should be aiming to win at least half our games against the rest of the top 7. So far we are W2 D3 L3 with four to play, three of which are away.
It’s just not been good enough, so we’ll have to seriously up our game to win the league. No more nerves.
Per said it all in his comments that this was like the city game and one after. I don’t believe the Gooners who fail to see Giroud is not going to win us things and AW is failing in the striker recruitment department. Show him a quick young midfielder he can nurture and he signs a blank cheque. Strange and costly quirk in our excellent manager. I’m tired of seeing Girouds theatrics after misses – which we see far more than we should. Top games are decided by fine lines and tonight we were the wrong side because of missed… Read more »
Where was #aha Poldi!? Miss his Thor presence
Didn’t use the subs?
Apart from when he brought on AOC for Rosicky.
If I was to just read the comments on here, I’d think we had lost.
Doom merchants the lot of ya!
Disappointing from us to the say the least. I am of the opinion that had we achieved a better result against Liverpool at Anfield and not got a drubbing we would have approached this game much differently. Hind sight is a wonderful thing but atleast we should have put that behind us and focused on beating the Dutch Skunk and his band of cuntblisters. We’ve contrived to let Liverpool in the title race as well. Overall we must pick up our performances over the coming days starting with Liverpool in the FA Cup. Ozil played quite well I felt. As… Read more »
Nervous? Fah-uuuck me, is that the reaction he talked about? The answers to the questions he mentioned? They should’ve been angry, they should’ve been hungry to get revenge. I get being tight at the back and slightly cautious, because we didn’t want to be chasing the game, but nervous?
At least we saw Ozil stand up and be counted. Ramsey can’t come back soon enough.
In 2006-7 ManU won just 1 of their 6 top 4 clashes and still won the title(we did a double on them) .Its league ,big games dont matter that much. Were a point behind, and in 12 games anything can happen. Suddenly every one expecting us to dominate, not just win every single match is unacceptable. May be we read too much newspaper, “make or break ” my ass…
Wenger was nervous; and the team he put out reflected that state of mind. And not putting subs on early/earlier killed our chance. Giroud was poor and 3 options on bench and wenger did nothing. The stats would reveal giroud missed half dozen chances minimum.
Seriously the handbrake was pulled by Wenger; we just seen it thru the subpar display of the team.
Btw, Ozil was very much on form. The poor guy looked up and had no /little op
Yes wenger, you are right, we were nervous.
We need big players to win big games. With respect of all good performance of Arsenal team, let us say we are not good enough to win big games and win a trophy. We need big players not just good players to win big games and win the league.
I don’t think, Wenger can do this in his life in Arsenal because other teams are big now.
Well, we can’t rely on Giroud. He’s knackered and and I’m not sure he suits our game when teams sit back (no runners beyond Giroud). I said elsewhere that maybe we’ve got to go for the false nine. For when Flamini returns: Chez Sagna Mert Kos Gibbs Flamini Oxlade Wilshere Ozil Cazorla Podlski Wilshere can be the most likely to help out Flamini. Poldi and Santi can interchange. In fact the whole team could be fluid in their movement. I would play Ozil in an advanced central position to make chances for himself and to look for runners. Anything but… Read more »
There’s no impressing some fans here. I think what will get us over the line first might just be beating the teams below United. We MUST win all those games and look to not losing against the other top 7 sides. Plenty to play for fellas.
This is the thing about dropping the 3 points to Liverpool. Gunnerblog made a point that it was just 3 points and better 3 points dropped to 2 draws and 4 points off. The problem is 3 points drop could also very well end up 6 or in this case 5 dropped. The after effects of the trashing invariably mean a more cautious approach which leaves us tentative and likely to end with a draw as we did with the Chelsea game following the humbling administered the other Death Run round by City. Not good. who dares wins as they… Read more »
wenger fans logic
we draw the match its not the end of the world
o.k we are just a point behind the leaders
now see this scenario we get a draw at liverpool
and beat man utd
we would be clear at the top of the table
but every time we lose or draw its o.k as we are not far off the top
but no one wants to see the reality
the amount of points we are dropping to big teams is crazy
Pls it can’t only be champions league next year
The result reflected a poor and unbalanced team selection, and that’s down to the manager. Ozil needs runners to attack the box, otherwise he’s wasted, and with Walcott and Ramsey out, that means one or more of Podolski, Chamberlain, or Gnabry need to be on the pitch. Giroud and Ozil both combine well with Podolski, why does Wenger refuse to play him? Gibbs stops and passes backwards or sideways far too often, as do many others who slow the game down and allow the opposition to regroup. Podolski is being sidelined by Wenger for some bizarre reason, and other players… Read more »
Do me a favour Wenger. What we needed last night was a genuine wide man. On the very few occasions we got to the byline to cross we looked like scoring. You failed to buy one in Jan and that is going to cost us dearly. An excuse of…. ‘we would have done more (in the window) if we had had 2 or 3 days more….’ is unbelievable. You had the whole of Jan to do it and you had the cash. Wilshere has turned into a Sunday morning pub player and on that showing Giroud is not our answer.… Read more »
While inevitably after a big loss the team will be nervous, is it not Wenger’s job to make sure they aren’t and make sure they don’t play with the ‘handbrake’. Only 1 substitution in the 70th minute showed he wasn’t that bothered about winning the game, and continuously not playing Podolski is a complete joke. While we look listless and tepid going forward, with just a knackered Giroud in the box and three guys behind him playing it sideways because there are no runners or movement, Liverpool are in scintillating form. We are going to get absolutely annihilated on Sunday.… Read more »
Substitutions are there for a reason. It was clear Giroud wasn’t going to make any impact, why not sub him when Ox came on. At that point anyone of Podolski, Bendtner or Sanogo would have done better or at worst same. AW needs to take risk at times especially from the 70th mark when he didn’t need Giroud’s defensive input.
For me the draw feels like a defeat considering how clos Liverpool is.
Arsene, you were nervous in the transfer window.
Arsene, you have the handbrake on, in the transfer window.
Liverpool reportedly was willing to let Luis Suarez go for £50,000,000. Which means that had we coughed up another mere £9,999,999 last summer Suarez would be banging in goals for us instead of the smashmuggers.
Missing that sitter from Sagna’s mouthwatering & inch-perfect cross is unacceptable. Same as Gervinho missing that sitter against Bradford City last year. Giroud needs to be our #2 option similar to the way Dzeko is for Man City. Nothing wrong with that.
I would take Dzeko over Giroud in a heartbeat
Ozil and Cazorla are not goal scorers… they can only get goals here and there but Wenger plays them like strikers
These two magicians need some players infront of them who bury the damn football in the back of the net
Giroud is not suited to our formation… he is more a player for the 4-4-2 where he needs someone like a Aguero or Suarez playing off him
Can Podolski play with Giroud in a 4-4-2 ? the cup game is where we should try may be
Our defence still looks solid… just worried about the goals COYG
this arsenal team pass the ball like blind cripples. the arsenal way of the defence splitting beautiful pass that garnered more awe and love than the goal it created exists no-where in this team. it is so so so wasteful with the ball.
*however i do buy into the thoughts that we just have the wrong to of striker to encourage such passing. giroud spent most of last night holding the ball up for no-one. no-one was there to play off.
Even if we win the league Wenger needs to retire
As manager it’s AW’s job to ensure that the team head out with no nerves. It’s his job to ensure that we take the handbrake off when required. If the team is nervous, I honestly believe that it’s filtering down from the top. No substitutions proved, in my opinion, that Wenger was more afraid of losing this match than being ambitious to win it. Some times you just have to say “f$#@ it” & go for it. United were ripe for the taking, & a win would have given us confidence, sent United into a tailspin, & sent a message… Read more »