The Gunners' wait for a first championship since the Invincibles of 2003/04 is set to continue with Chelsea one win away from securing the title.
Wenger's men have been the Premier League's form side since the turn of the year - they have lost only twice and are on a nine-game unbeaten run.
However they won only nine of their opening 20 games which left them playing catch-up.
They sat sixth on New Year's Day, 13 points behind Chelsea, and while they have managed to climb to third they have been unable to close the gap on the champions in waiting.
Arsenal had 12 players involved in the World Cup in Brazil with Mesut Ozil, Per Mertesacker and Lukas Podolski winning the competition with Germany.
And Wenger believes the subsequent fitness problems for his players following the conclusion of the tournament and a big impact on their season.
"I've said many times that we had big injuries at the start of the season, after the World Cup, and that we only got our squad together more recently," Wenger said.
"Even then we still lost players like Jack Wilshere in November, and then again afterwards. We were not all together.
"It took us some time to find a good balance in the team and we dropped some points because of that.
"When you look at games like Stoke away, the big disappointment for us was that we had a very young defence on the day and missing players was certainly detrimental to our results."
