Arsene Wenger says Arsenal beat West Bromwich Albion with a ‘serious’ performance but admits his side should have added to Alexis Sanchez’s two first half strikes.
The Chile international scored twice from outside the box, a rasping low drive after six minutes and a deft free-kick just before the break, however, his teammates including Mesut Ozil, Olivier Giroud and Aaron Ramsey all wasted chances of their own.
After the 2-0 victory, a result that sees the Gunners return to third place in the Premier League table, Wenger urged his team to finish the season strongly.
“We did the job in a serious way,” the Frenchman told the BBC. “We played well technically and the only regret is we should have scored more goals.
“The early goal helped us not be anxious about the consequence of the result.
“We are in a position where it depends on us to finish in the top three but we want more and we have to fight to do that and if possible do more.”
“For us, every point is key,” Wenger added in his post-game press conference. “We are under permanent pressure in every single game. We want to finish as high as possible. There still can be twists and turns before the season ends. We give everything in every game.”
Analysing the performance in more detail, he continued: “We dominated the game from the first minute to the last. The quality was good. We should have scored more but [at least] we didn’t concede. Maybe we didn’t finish the way we wanted.
“We came out of the West Ham and Palace games [both drawn] thinking we had quality but not the points we deserved. That is our regret.”
The victory was played out against swathes of empty seats at the Emirates. While supporter apathy, in light of recent results, has been cited as the main reason for season ticket holders staying away, the boss also hinted that the game being moved to a Thursday for broadcast purposes could have played a part.
“My message would be [to] come and support the team,” Wenger said when asked about the situation. “If you love football, out there you see quality. But are we intelligent enough to know why everyone didn’t turn up?”
I wonder, does he tell his players to “show up to every game”?
That’s some fucking question…should you have to tell someone been paid an average of 100k a week to turn up ? My boss expects me to turn up and put in a shift for a neck of a lot less
My point is he constantly questions the fans who do certain things.
Does he question the players? Like Walcott not tracking back when playing on the wing, yet he consistently does it.
Are we intelligent enough to know why we didn’t turn up ? Ah ya mr Wenger we are not stupid enough to not know that we are out of title race and frankly bored and don’t care as much as where we finish now. Title is gone. That’s why.
Someone want to tell him that it was definitely apathy and not the fact that it was Thursday that kept fans away. Can he really be that naive?
Either naïve or in denial.
Just trolling fans – of course he knows but he does not want to acknowledge it in public.
Wenger – “We give everything in every game.”
Hmmm
They really do. I don’t think they go out there wanting to give a little less. Not ever.
Now, if he had said they give everything in every transfer window, then I’d be up in arms. heh
You don’t have to have a degree in Economics Arsene to work this out mate, the fans are staying away because this team, your team, offers no hope anymore. We’re not even entertaining… we don’t rip teams apart, we don’t go for the throat, because we’ve been sucker punched too many times and now we’re too scared of getting hurt by our opponents. This isn’t an Arsene Wenger team, it has no verve or swagger. No joy or character. We are at the moment a second class tika taka, sideways passy passy, slow moving, slow thinking and desperately predictable team.… Read more »
you can hope and hope, but with arsene in charge for another year we know how this plays out.
Dude, fantastic comment, encapsulates so much of what I feel. But I’m kinda convinced Arsene is not sharp enough anymore and he lacks someone close who challenges him. Blogs and a few others have made the point often, it seems like he’s too loyal to his players now, his emotions get in the way of buying and selecting a team on merit alone. So the players go soft in all the cotton wool, they lose direction. Anyway, Arsenal make me sad. It’s not going to improve under Wenger, and it’s going to go worse if he leaves or gets fired.… Read more »
Steve Bould needs to stand up to him and give the players a rollicking if Wenger is not willing to.
Good comment, though isn’t the problem that he did give us something to hope for when we were top of the league on the 4th of January?
The disappointment comes from the time after that and is so much higher due to what we were hoping for then.
But are we intelligent enough to know why everyone didn’t turn up?” Hmmm. Obviously like some I find it fairly unsettling to see some supporters turning so vocally and viciously on Wenger at games, but perhaps it is the shot in the arm he needs. In previous times it seems like he could have put protests down to a cantankerous minority, but the scale and venom of recent protests seems to have awoken a realization in the man. Perhaps he considered himself untouchable amongst the majority of the fanbase up to this point, but it now has dawned on him… Read more »
This man is in clear denial of the fact that fans didn’t turn up because of supporter apathy. Does he want to pretend that nothing is going on?
He knows fine well why. He’s just refusing to say it publicly.
Oh ok. Another one of Wenger’s “I didn’t see it.” situations.
Instead, he comes out with “The early goal helped us not be anxious about the consequence of the result.”
Absolute flannel of a statement. Makes these men seem like bed-wetters. I would much rather he just say “I’m not going to be ze man you want me to be anymore” and as the panels fold away, AW struts out of there and down the holloway road into the sunset….
It is pretty clear that he means exactly that, don’t know how you can interpret that in another way. Give the guy a break.
Stroll in the park tonight. Over for this season, let’s be honest. We should finish third. Nice touch at the game tonight, during the halftime break, playing a Prince Song as part of the half time music/entertainment ?
Raspberry Parade….just remembered
Missed the game and this headline was my first mention of it. Assumed he meant a draw, thank fuck, although my response was more meh than usual for obvious reasons
Too many people are coming on here are revelling in their own prejudices. Others are taking too narrow a view of the situation we find ourselves in. If we take personalities out of it, what are we left with. A midfield where we all think we are dependant on Santi, but are not (look at our results before and after he was injured). Where having someone who looks and seems to be like a very, very good goalkeeper has not in reality made much difference (look at the number of goals conceded this year and compare to the previous 3… Read more »
Our problem is upfront. We have average strikers. Tell me, when was the last time we’ve had a team win the league without a 20 goals a season striker??
What is the point of having ozil if we’re only going to finish 11 percent of the chances he creates?
Either we get a world class striker or just try alexis as a 9 and get another scoring winger.
Alexis could be our sergio aguero. Wenger screwed up chances to get suarez and Higuain, so its almost impossible to get one now.
I think the biggest problem has been that the team has been missing a playmaker CM like Cazorla, Arteta or Wilshere to control the games, keep the ball when the team is under pressure and start counter attacks with small dribbles and fast passes.This is not what Flamini or Ramsey do well. The introduction of Elneny has helped and there was some return of form when he came into the team. Unfortunately all 3 of these have missed the majority of the season. Ramsey is a good CM but needs a playmaker to play with, as he did so well… Read more »
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Next!!!
“For us, every point is key.”
Pity you didn’t clock on to this fact when we played Palace or Swansea at home. Then every point might have been key in the race for the title.
Honestly, does he have Walcott writing his sound bites now?
Every point is Key…..Has the Pope got a balcony…..It gets bad when AW states the B Obvious and sounds like Michael Owen on a good day.
“Every point is key”. No shit.
COY GUNNERS!!
It hurts that every other team & manager in the PL are better than Arsenal.
What the fuck!!! I hope these posho fans that stayed away last night stay away for good, treating it like a west end show! Good riddance
Liverpool away, Swansea home, Spurs away, West Ham away, Palace home = 4 points instead of 15 from winning positions. We’d be going a point clear this morning. And the seats would have been packed if they’d kicked off at midnight. It’s not a problem in defence or attack it’s throughout the team. It’s not stats it’s leaving every bead of sweat and brain cell out on the pitch. Ramsey and Flamini apparently didn’t work but it didn’t work because two players were not bright enough to be conservative for a handful of games for the sake of the team.… Read more »
It really is that simple though. Hold on to those 5 winning positions – very doable – and we are in the box seat. What really hurts, different to previous seasons, is we played well for most of those games too. A combination of poor chance conversion and not defending as a team means another season gone. Will we ever learn?
The Emporer is naked!
Let no one be fooled by the result yesterday. West Brom was very poor. Our problem is not necessarily the players the main problem we have is Arsene Wenger, until he goes we will continue to wallow in our shattered dreams. I know some of our fans may not like hearing this but that is the simple truth. I said this few years ago and some fans were not happy hearing it. The same problems I pointed out then have magnified. There is something about Wenger that doesn’t motivate the players to play to their optimum. If you give some… Read more »
Yeah finishing between 2nd and 4th for 10 years sounds catastrophically bad. Though agree that this season has been a dissapoinment. Still happy that this club is no real madrid, although the fans are starting to resemble those madridistas..
“We came out of the West Ham and Palace games [both drawn] thinking we had quality but not the points we deserved. That is our regret.” No Arsene, we got what we deserved both times because of our naivety and, in the West Ham game especially, poor team selection. If we had won those two games we’d only be a point of Sp*rs and 6 off Leicester, although in truth we should have been well clear given the run in we’ve had. We rode our luck from November when things weren’t really clicking and the wheels well and truly came… Read more »
Sell those seats to football lovers, sell those seats to Arsenal fans, sell those seats to people who are grateful to be alive, sell those seats to fans that pay less to enjoy the beautiful football! Or charge high prices and be demanded to do what it costs to pay the highest ticket prices in hard times. COYG!!!!