Arsene Wenger has rubbished a report that he gave his first team players two days off after the defeat to Watford.
“Wenger gives flops two days off” read a headline in Thursday’s Times. The actual article, by Deputy Football correspondent Matt Hughes, seemingly contradicted that assertion:
“All the players who appeared against Watford have been given two days of light recovery sessions in the gym and will not touch a ball until tomorrow.”
Asked, via Twitter, for a clarification on whether the players were off, or still at work, Hughes confirmed:
@AAllenSport Light recovery inside yesterday, day off today. Only one training session before Chelsea. Schedule was planned last week.
— Matt Hughes (@MattHughesTimes) February 2, 2017
In his-pre-Chelsea press conference, Wenger verified that his players were given a single day off as part of a schedule planned prior to Tuesday’s defeat.
“No, we had not a couple of days off. We were in on Wednesday.
“Yesterday [they had a day off], but not a couple of days off. They had one day off. That was always planned.”
Asked to expand on the thinking behind the rest, Wenger was curt, “No [I won’t go into the thinking behind the schedule]. We do our job, we do it the way I think we should do it. We have not to explain too much.”
The boss also made clear that his players know that they need to take responsibility for their performances and that they are angry about losing ground after their latest defeat.
“Yes, the players know that. We try to prepare them as well as we can and I think we put a big effort in to prepare for Tuesday night.
“Sub-consciously, it wasn’t there. I must say as well that we were punished by the fact after 13 minutes were down 2-0. Everything went against us on the night. In the preparation of the game I could not detect a lack concentration from the players.”
He continued: “First of all, we want to recover from our disappointment. Everybody knows that [we need to do that] inside the club. I think the team is healthy, united and has a desire to put things right straight away. On that front, everybody is focused on tomorrow’s game.
“You have to recover from the games, you have four days. It’s mainly mental to prepare, [also] it’s tactical to prepare the team for tomorrow’s game.
“You’re not at the [top] level if you don’t care about winning and losing. These guys they are highly concerned and highly disappointed when they don’t win. At our level we live to win. When we don’t you’re of course frustrated and angry.”
I’m a Big Wenger critic of a lot of things he does, mainly tactics, but what Dafuq has this got to do with anything? Is the journalist insinuating that the response to a loss is to get the players in and work them really hard and have them running up hills Ornua something? The 80s called, it wants its methods back. Clubs like Arsenal implement deep monitoring systems for Erie athletes; from tracking system sports to player loading, sleep monitoring, heart-rate Variability, etc. If the monitoring indicated the players need 2 days off maybe because they’ve accumulated fatigue, then so… Read more »
I know this might seem as if I am wearing a tin foil hat, but there is a huge anti media campaign against Arsenal, and against Wenger especially. And just to clarify I am not trying to defend that absolute shit show from Tuesday night, but the way we have been hammered in the press since has been ridiculous. The Wednesday morning I made a coffee and stuck on Sky Sports News (stupidly) where I watched these so called ‘footballing experts’ sit there and say, ‘the only real competition for the title now is from Tottenham,’ even though they fucking… Read more »
I wholeheartedly agree.
Well said, sir
Spot on! I’ve been saying this for a while now and even my mate who’s a mugsmasher agrees that we get the worst of it (He mostly laughs). Football journalism in this country is like a Trump wet dream with made up facts, snide ill thought out comments and laughable stupid opinion pieces. Even if we won the title this year I doubt we’d be lauded as champions we’d most likely see back pages about how our whole team are leaving and there’s a petition for Spuds to get it because ‘it’s their time’.
Exactly? so heres another bit of total bias bullshit. The London Football Awards are tonight, and who are the managers nominated, ‘Pochettino and Conte’ – why Pochettino? what has he done? all he had to do last year was go away to an already relegated Premier League side and beat them. Oh and that team were down to 10 men. And what happened? The cunt couldnt fucking do it. And what else you say?? Oh this is the same Manager that loves getting his team eliminated from The Champions League, with a piss easy group before the knockout stages.. Fuck… Read more »
The wisest and most realistical post I have read on this site in as long as I can remember. In particular the facts about other leading clubs about the last time they won anything. I am not wooden and realise that Arsene is not all things to all men,but after being a loyal supoorter for 47 years it could be a whole lot worse, and has been. Titles are great but not the be all and end all, football comes first.
eh, ‘the media’ as a collective group is a lot more heterogenous than football fans care to admit, whoever they happen to support, and it’s clear there’s a lot of goodwill towards Wenger out there but also a fair bit for the club and the way it has shied away from the more grotesque excesses of modern football while staying competitive.
Every year I find it easier to tune out and ignore the negativity when we have a setback on the pitch, both in the national media and fan media. It’s just not really worth paying attention to
ZZz this is getting boring now. You know the drill a defeat comes then everyone is angry and we’ll be better prepared next time blah blah just get to May already and leave please. We meed fresh ideas into the club now, and as much as I hate to say it winning the pl is past you prof.
This I agree. Every time i hear Arsene after a defeat, feels like i have heard all this before. Same old excuses. Frankly, I don’t think he even knows/think he can win the PL anymore. I don’t think he even knows why we lose some of the games, despite all the preparation he does. Arsenal fans are stuck in this shit until he reaches a point , and decides to quit. He is 67, I think he will continue for another 5 years minimum. So forget about the trophies and just focus on aspects like how cool is Alexis and… Read more »
But to be fair, other than Conte (who hasn’t had many defeats lately) all the managers of the top 6 come off as idiots with their comments after defeats. I think AW shows more dignity than those two morons in Manchester and even Klopp. And i seem to recall Conte looking a little hot and bothered in the early part of the season.
That said, i care much more about wtf AW is saying in the dressing room prior t matches. Clearly he’s getting that wrong.
Well at least he is not trotting out the old “we have to learn from our mistake” bullshit……or am i being too soon?
Fair enough.
I do think he has a point when he says things went against us on the night. The first goal was a lucky deflection but there’s no excusing the second. We were outfought and bullied into conceding and that’s very, very difficult to swallow.
I thought the 2nd goal was due to a very poor bouncing square throw from Gabriel to Ramsey. Not so much bullying.
We were bullied because there were no leaders and we were trying to walk it in because Ozil is lazy and we should just have a shot. The only way to fix our problems is to buy Sebastien Frey.
Maybe a wall might have helped.
i think even though we were two goals down we could’ve atleast drawn the game. in the second half we made on change to replace giroud with walcot and the from there on the front three was electric. we had so many chances . iwobi on the left was at the heart of it all. then we made a critical mistake , we brought in perez for coquelin and changed iwobi from left wing to centre midfield.in a way i could understand the change as coqueline was a passenger throughout the game but that change killed the momentum we were… Read more »
I am not sure if a one day break helps a team when they have a big game. I am not the coach so I leave that to them. If the break does good, then it is okay. Maybe the sluggish first-half performance was as a result too much training.
What we need is a win against Chelsea and hopefully, we just that
Look, against Watford, Wenger is right to an extent. We conceded 2 goals from almost nothing. The first one, unlucky deflection. The key is, the cheap free kick Mustafi gave away. The second one, you could fault the everyone involved from the throw in, the Ramsey miss control, Coquelin allowing the run, and Mustafi backing up all the way into his own goal. Then there’s too much to do. What Wenger needs to sort is the balance of the team. You play Giroud, without any natural width. No sense. You don’t even switch Alexis to the right, to play higher… Read more »
THIS JUST IN! Seems like everyone at Arsenal is conducting themselves to a suitably professional standard.
— Not a headline grabber is it, reality.
I wonder if we factored in how much Watford would be motivated by Graham Taylor’s funeral the next day.They failed to win the home game after his death and I think they really wanted to make up for that.
See t’s obvious these kind of articles only serve one purpose: to rile up the team’s support, annoy and infuriate the fan base. Generate a furore then sit back and watch. I thought journalism was mean to report the news, the stories, not make them. Sadly these fucks continue to do it their own idiotic way.
The media players apparently decided they’d take Tuesday night off instead.
I still think Ramsey was carrying an injury into the game, like he was against Liverpool
Alexis is leaving guys accept it now. Just imagine how much better he would be under conte or simeone. Push his buttons challenge him then unleash him. Be unstoppable
Central midfield is a problem. We are exceptionally thin.
Santi and Elneny will bring no relief as they are both crocked.
Granit returns too late.
Ramsey has been insipid and together with Coquelin always suspect.
Here’s hoping Ox can come in and provide something extra next to Coquelin but I also feel Ozil will have to play the game of his life tomorrow or the two in midfield will be swamped by Chelsea.
Those twits that praise Bould when we win and condemm Wenger went we lose need to get their heads straight. They simply feed into the media narrative who are more concern with sowing discontent amongst our fan base. I think we were crap on Tuesday but Wenger made the right selection for the team particularly in view of coming Chelsea game. He needs to rest the players what’s wrong with that? Particularly Bellerin if he should come in tomorrow and punish Chelsea, I’m all for it. Play him against Watford when he isn’t 100% and he gets a knock and… Read more »
The press have never liked arsenal even when we win they try to put us down.I like it if we had a tony adams back in our team, loved him man