Having had our bottoms handed to us in early kick-offs against Liverpool and Manchester City last season it was inevitable that Arsene Wenger would be questioned on the topic of match times on the eve of another early-afternoon showdown with Manuel Pellegrini’s reigning Premier League champions.
His response boils down to the fact Arsenal have no excuse for not delivering at 12.45pm and that he actually quite likes the timing of such games…possibly because he can get home earlier and watch even more football?
“I think the coincidence was that we played against very strong teams away from home at 12.45,” the boss said in today’s press conference when quizzed about his side’s poor run of form in such fixtures last year.
“I think it was more the quality of our opponents and the lack of quality in our performance that produced a result, not the kick-off time.
“At home we’ve played well at 12.45. In the FA Cup we had great games at 12.45. It’s not the kick-off time, it’s your performance. It’s how you turn up. At 12.45 or three o’clock – for me that’s just talk. It’s the quality of the performance that counts.
“Would you rather kick off at 3 o’clock or 12.45? It’s two hours and 15 minutes. That does not produce a miracle in your physical recovery. Sometimes maybe, on our side, we go a bit too much overboard on that. I think 12.45 is a good kick-off time. I like it.”
Wenger also touched on how beating City this weekend (yes please!) represents a good opportunity to pick up steam after two draws away from home in succession.
“It is a good opportunity to show that we have improved on that front because a year before it was completely the opposite and last year it was like that,” said Wenger.
“We have now got the opportunity to show that we have grown as a team, that we are more mature and ready for the fight. Let’s do it.
“I don’t think that this game is very important for us mathematically [just] because we dropped points away from home [at Everton and Leicester]. But it gives us credibility and confidence if we do well.
“It’s a big game and for us it is a home game as well. We had a decent start in the Premier League but of course we dropped some points and we have a good opportunity at home to play against Manchester City and get the three points.”
So Arsene likes early-kick offs. That’s good. Perhaps it’s his players who don’t.
Que loads of comments about how Arsene must be mad and/or “it wasn’t the kick off time, it was his fucking tactics” and/or “it’s a conspiracy, the FA gave us those fixtures cos they hate us”
Nah none of that but I fucking hate early kick offs because they completely bollix all socialising afterwards.
Right. It gets worse across the sea, time to prepare my liver for a few guinnesses at 7 AM…
I hate early kick-offs. Football should be played at 3 pm on a Saturday.
The shame about tomorrow’s game is that if we take points off City then we’ll only be helping Chelsea. As Wenger has made sure that we have no chance of winning the title with six defenders, the Chavs we be the real beneficiaries of an Arsenal win or a draw.
yeah it’d be a massive shame if we took points off Citeh, let alone beat them. What a nightmare
Clearly any sensible gooner should be cheering on the Sky Blues
wait, wtf?
Do you really expect sense from fatgooner
I usually expect negativity and unreasonable criticism of AW but the implication that it’d be better for the opposition to win is, I think, a new symptom in FG’s descent to madness
Nurse! The screens!
You just don’t get it, do you, Sam? The point I was trying to make is that instead of us challenging for the title this season, yet again we’ll be scampering around, trying to pick up the crumbs. We should be genuinely looking forward to a title challenge this season; instead, under our “fourth is a trophy” manager we’ll all be celebrating Champions’ League qualification (via a the play-off) after we fall away in February. That’s all that Wenger can do for us. And as I hate, loathe and despise everything about Chelsea then Saturday’s game puts me in an… Read more »
No, I don’t think any person on here gets you.
a: you are having an internal monologue. in public. on teh interwebs
b: this is the fourth game of the season. it is not the time to start considering that level of enmity with respect to who we want to win the title least of all
c: when that time comes, the monologue is internal. we do not publicly speculate on the potential benefits of not winning
d: that is all
Obviously the solution to your dilemma, Fatgooner, is to make sure that we beat Chelsea home and away. Would that make you feel better about the prospect of beating Citeh?
Or maybe logic isn’t your strong point…
Yet Chelsea will win the league with 6 defenders? Hmmm, go figure.
Actually, their website claims they have 8. But three of them are under 20, one of whom has never played for them at all. So if we count, say, Bellerin and Hayden as part of our first team, our defence is pretty much equal to theirs in terms of depth.
I missed you man! True story; I was just asking myself “Where’s Fats? I miss his pessimism and cynicism…”, and here you are. I never agree with a single thing you say, but I still like you for some reason. Not like how I like Theo, but still.
This comment is so stupid it hurts surely Blogs can do something about this guy? Being a troll must give you some sadomasochistic pleasure but why the rest of us must be subject to it should be looked into.
Waaaaaaaaaa, “blogs can you do something” Gimmie a break, quit whining……….it’s one idiot commenter doing it to get a rise out of over-sensitive clowns like you, downvote him/her & move along bruh
Dude, you need a class in logic.
Fatgooner, make love not hate.
Smeg no, don’t tell him that! He might reproduce!
COYG lets set the record straight
bottoms handed to us by Chelsea as well 🙁
i like early kick offs, more time in the pub after.
some one needs a whooping from us on a 1245 KO. and it needs to start this Sat
Heh!
I must say, usually I can aaalllmooossst (if I squint and take drag of some whack shit) see some sense in Fatgooner’s posts. He’s now reverting to just plain and simple dumbfuckery. Yaawn!
I like 12.45 kick-offs too. Means I can start off with a beer even earlier.
Early kick offs are fine… Over here game starts at 7:45. I either get a whole Saturday of being ecstatic, or a whole Saturday or being curled up in bed wondering if football was invented specifically to bring me pain… I had a lot of the latter last year…ends now
I hate 12:45a kick-offs. It’s 4:45a here, and it’s just been made illegal for pubs to PVR the game and show it at a more reasonable time.
I think it’s pretty obvious that kick-off times weren’t actually to blame for us getting tonked. More the fact that we got things wrong tactically away from home against the best teams in the league. Hopefully we’ve learned our lessons!
Uh oh…….you questioned our tactics in big matches!!!! The commenter up top warned me about realists like you!!!
It’s true though. Tactics do not make you fall apart to that extent, unless we’re talking about fielding a team full of strikers and even then there’s a chance of outscoring the opposition…
I only hate early kick-offs if we lose. Makes me permutate unnecessarily about other games.
Early kickoff’s can fucking do one, I’ll be at work until deep into the second half.
I fucking hate early kick offs as I’m at work till well into second half as well.
I fucking hate early kick offs because I don’t like getting up and leaving home at 10.30 to go football. No chance of a decent breakfast.
Yeah, really. I mean, who’s to be up by 10:00? You can still taste the toothpaste.
I Love it when we win I hate it when we lose. Period
We Americans hate early kick-offs with a passion, I ended up recording most of them last year for being too hung over to get up so early on a Saturday. Let’s hope that this season it’s worth the trouble.
Amen to that! 12:45 translates to 4:45 AM in California, and I’m so zonked I’m in danger of spilling coffee on my Ozil jersey.
#Wengerout
More 930am games please.
-West coast Gooners.
This is Arsenal! I’ll be up at 4:45 a.m. I’d be up at 2:45 if i had to. In fact, I’d stay up for that. COYG. Welback up front. Alexis out right. Ozil in the hole. Nasri up Clichy’s arse.
£3.95 for a pint in Cambridge, every half an hour-ish until closing time; 1245 kick offs clean me out!
Playing all games at 3pm British time would be stupid. I like that I can watch more than one game in a day without using my PVR and hoping the commentators don’t ruin the scores in other games.
I’d even like the EPL to have more Friday night games (maybe for non-CL teams). The NFL (although I hate American Football) realized that it was great business to spread the games about a bit.
COYG!!! Welbeck for the brace!
But we don’t play twice a day!
I am a US West Coast gunner accustomed to 4 am kickoffs — and who hasn’t missed a minute of AFC football in a decade — but who will, thanks to the travel gods smiling upon me, be at the stadium live for only the second time in my life.
Is there another global team that inspires this level of dedication? I don’t mean that rhetorically — it really does seem that there are so many of us that go to such great lengths to watch a team we love.
It’s quite amazing how many people travel from around the world just to watch Arsenal play. I’ve made one or two trips from Vancouver to London every year for the best part of a decade, and every time there’ve been several hundred in the seats for foreign supporters clubs. So many people that I know profess to support that mid-table team from the northwest, and yet amongst all of them, I can’t think of a single one that has ever gone to a match for “their” club. Arsenal, like no other team, inspires a feeling of family. Enjoy your trip,… Read more »
Thanks man! I just checked in to my hotel and am quite sure I will be unable to sleep tonight. This is my Santa Claus and my Disneyland, all rolled up into one.
12:45pm kickoff = 9:45pm kickoff in aus. I vote for more early kickoffs. hahahahah
Early kick-offs are fine if you don’t lose. But i believe that this time we’re not gonna lose, i have a feeling about that & because we’re playing at home & also because we got Sanchez & Welbeck! Forward Gunners! #COYG 🙂