Wojciech Szczesny says that although he’s pleased the Gunners saw off Everton’s challenge for the top four, finishing below Chelsea, Liverpool and Man City is not good enough for the Arsenal.
The Polish stopper was aiming higher than that this season, bemoaned injuries and called on the club to make improvements in the transfer market this summer. A win in the final home game of the season was something of a damp squib because Everton’s defeat to Man City meant fourth place was assured, but Szczesny took no comfort from that.
“With two games to go we had nothing to play for and we shouldn’t really be in that position,” he said following the West Brom game.
“We should be fighting for the title. I believe we should be in a position to challenge to win the Premier League. But we dropped some important points and lost games and had a new challenge, to finish fourth when we weren’t probably the favourites to do that. At least we managed to do that for our fans and hopefully we’ll manage to get the FA Cup for them.
“I never considered fourth place before the start of the season as a successful season and a good position. I play for Arsenal because I want to win the title every year.
“Obviously, at some point, when you lose games and you lose the chance to fight for the title, then the new challenge is to secure the Champions League spot and that was the aim this season but I wouldn’t have taken it last summer.”
Describing the injuries to Mesut Ozil, Aaron Ramsey and Theo Walcott as key factors in the teams three-quarter season slump, he went on to say that with new players and more consistency, they’d keep up their title challenge for longer next season, and pointed to some improvement over the course of the campaign.
“We have improved, so that’s one thing we have learned. The squad is stronger and everyone can say the squad was strong enough to challenge for the title. It didn’t happen for us this year but one thing we have learned is that we are good enough to challenge next year, and hopefully add a little bit more strength as well with a couple of new players coming in.
“Hopefully we will be stronger and, if we manage to keep the consistency for the whole season, we’ll be up there.”
I’ve absolutely no doubt that we will be stronger and better next season, but will we be better than our current rivals? -We have to wait and see. Either way, if we don’t buy great players that will improve us significantly there is no way the fans are going to take more excuses, again. I’m not expecting any drastic changes in the manager’s thinking, but we have the money, there are excellent players out there, so let’s do this.
Right attitude, let’s start off by killing that damned monkey.
You don’t have to kill anything. It’s only a monkey. Just grab it by the scruff of its neck (I’m assuming monkeys have scruffs of neck), remove it from whatever metaphorical back it’s on, and put it in a glass case next to the FA Cup until it learns not to bother us again. Then hand the monkey over to someone else. You could always give it to Liverpool, but they seem to have a pretty determined Premier League one already that’s not letting go – ‘like ever’. You could give it to Sp*rs, but they’ve loads of monkeys –… Read more »
Unfortunately, we have less money than some other clubs in our league, which definitely matters when trying to sign big names. The other unfortunate thing is that we look like going through another replacement transfer period, rather than a squad improvement period. Other than probably replacing Sagna, Fabianski and Verm, we have one or two strikers to find, another CB, maybe a DM and probably a left winger. Tall order, really.
As far as numbers are concerned, we will have a busy summer. But at least the spine of the team is intact. I know some will like to see a pacey striker instead, but having Giroud is good. Notice that teams go for the high press against us unlike back in the Van-somebody days where they seat deep and wait for the counter. Nowadays it is not a good idea to have Arsenal passing around your final third since we have a physical CF to force play and creative slickers like Carzola and Ozil. What we need is more pace… Read more »
Well ain’t that the truth?!
Need to sign Gustavo or Schneiderlin or we’ll keep suffering in the big games, which has cost us the title this year along with injuries.
Gustavo collect’s more cards than Flamini mate.
you mean Gattuso?
At Arsenal, do they train the players to be so immensely likeable?
Yes. So well I even used to like Na$ri and that skunk. They couldn’t hide their true character though…
He is right to say fourth isn’t enough. Watching the game on Sunday was a little boring I have to say. When u r not playing for anything just takes the excitement out of it. But as arsenal fan watching the football at the weekend was absolutely brilliant. Man U getting beaten by Sunderland and en ex gunner scoring the goal was lovely. Spuds getting duffed was just a pleasure to watch. I loved the look on joses face when he knew the league was over was just a sight to behold and his interview after was excellent. The best… Read more »
Cant begrudge him of his comments, there is a strong possibilty of us finishing with 79 points, which would have given us 2nd place last year.
Incredible to see the competition has rise so much this year, any improvements in arsenal seemed to have been masked,
Another conclusion could be that the mid and lower table teams are just that bit more crap this season. Therefore, the teams above have (more easily) accumulated a lot more points.
Argh! We hear these comments every year from our players… If only they didn’t crumble everytime the pressure is on during the season…
Off topic: what about the epic choke job by Liverpool! After 20-something years of not winning the league, with everything in their hands. And the let it SLIP away.
Nothings won or lost yet. Liverpool may have failed in the last two matches but Man Shitty still have two to play, both of which they need to win to secure the league, so they need to keep their head in the game. Still if Man Shitty win it will be the lesser of three evils, with competition from Diverpool and the Parked Bus. Money greedy mercenaries they may be, but they really do play good, exciting football without relying on cheating or boring opponents to death.
The football gods have a wicked sense of humor! Hopefully they don’t laugh at our expense for the FA Cup
@Deano, Gustavo is a very efficient DM. Cards shouldn’t deter us from creating a buffer for our oft-top-EPL-teams-harassed defence. Remember the Vieira-Gilberto days? Vieira wasn’t famed for his neat play but that twin DM buffer contributed a lot to the success of those days.
I disagree with Blogs about who should start the final. It’s not about ‘sentinment’, it’s about rewarding the person who got us to the final with his excellent keeping. Or you could say “Thanks for getting us to the final, Fabianski, now fuck off, Szczesny is taking over”. Szczesny is our no.1, but Fabianski has improved a lot, and now there isn’t much to choose between them. Also, Szczesny is 24, so he’ll be around for ten years or more, he’ll get plenty of opportunities to win stuff with us. And, looking at it another way, not winning the FA… Read more »
Liverpool are a joke…hehehehehe