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Arsène Wenger
Arsène Wenger, left, could only look on as Arsenal lost 6-3 at Manchester City last season. Photograph: Peter Powell/EPA Photograph: Peter Powell/EPA
Arsène Wenger, left, could only look on as Arsenal lost 6-3 at Manchester City last season. Photograph: Peter Powell/EPA Photograph: Peter Powell/EPA

Arsène Wenger wants to show Arsenal can stomach lunchtime games

This article is more than 9 years old
Manager saw his team lose heavily in early kick-offs against title rivals last season but says nothing should be read into it
Arsenal’s poor record in recent lunchtime games

To Arsène Wenger, it boiled down to freakish coincidence and one brutal truth. When the demands of the Premier League fixture schedulers and television companies contrived to hand Arsenal 12.45pm kick-offs in their hardest away games of last season – at Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea – the result was a clutch of chastening defeats.

Arsenal were simply not good enough on the days, Wenger has said on numerous occasions, and the regrets have stuck with him and his players. The scale of the defeats were eye-watering – Arsenal shipped 17 goals in them – and the damage was of wrecking ball proportions. Wenger’s team did not feel as though they were within touching distance of the title but they did finish seven points off the pace. Without those results, who knows what might have happened?

Instead, a narrative strand has taken hold, much to Wenger’s irritation, and it has framed Arsenal’s meeting with City at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday, which kicks off at 12.45pm. The perception is that Arsenal cannot do the business against the big teams in the weekend’s early game. They have come to lack the necessary concentration. There is a weakness in their make-up.

It became a talking point last season, particularly after the 6-0 loss at Chelsea on 22 March, which seemed to reinforce the trend. Some of the Arsenal players mentioned it in interviews and even Wenger, in a slightly unguarded moment this week, made an admission. “Sometimes, maybe, on our side, we go a bit too much overboard on that,” he said, of the 12.45pm debate.

In an era where the game’s minutiae is under forensic scrutiny, it does not take much for patterns and theories to gather momentum, for them to enter the heads of the players. And make no mistake, Arsenal have looked at this: examining their preparations, poring over the data.

According to Wenger, there is nothing to it, no deep and meaningful explanation as to why Arsenal have underperformed of late in the early kick-off against the big clubs. In 2012-13, they lost at home in the league to Chelsea and away at Manchester United, although they did hammer Tottenham Hotspur at the Emirates. Last season, they beat Everton at home in the FA Cup at 12.45pm.

“We live in a society,” Wenger began, as he is so fond of beginning, “where you need to find explanations for everything. Let’s not forget that we are competitive people and, sometimes, when your opponent is better than you, you lose. It wouldn’t matter if we played at nine o’clock at night or 12.45pm. They were better than us.

“Let’s not make a psychological problem of it. What is very difficult psychologically is to lose the games. In my job, what is most important is always to find the right reasons and I don’t think it was to do with the early kick-off time.

“I think the coincidence last season was that we played against very strong teams away from home at 12.45pm and it was more the quality of our opponents and the lack of quality in our performance that produced the result, not the kick-off time.”

Wenger was on the offensive and it was understandable that he would want to rubbish the notion that doubts might undermine his players in such situations. He was also quick to point out that the crashes last season had not come at the Emirates and he said that he would do nothing differently in terms of his preparations for the City game.

“Would you rather kick-off at three o’clock or 12.45pm?” Wenger added. “It’s two hours and 15 minutes [difference]. That does not produce a miracle in your physical recovery.”

Wenger, though, cannot and did not dispute the broader issue of Arsenal’s recent travails against the teams that have made up the top four with them. Last season, they took five points from the six matches against them; the season before, it was two and before that, six. In three seasons, they have won three league fixtures against top-four finishers. For a club with aspirations to win the title, it has not been good enough and Wenger suggested that Arsenal’s credibility, as much as anything else, was at stake against City.

The game marks the beginning of a testing sequence for them, with the Champions League trip to Borussia Dortmund looming on Tuesday night, and league fixtures against Tottenham and Chelsea on the calendar over the next three weeks.

“It is a good opportunity to show that we have improved on that front,” Wenger said, with regard to Arsenal’s record against the top four. “We have 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 this game is very important for us mathematically but it gives us credibility and the confidence to do well. Let’s not forget that we go to Dortmund just after. The pressure is big in a game like this but you want that, we enjoy that. We can show that we have the quality to deal with it.”

The pre-match conversation with Wenger took in the slightly moot point about his failure to sign a holding midfielder during the summer. “We could have taken one more midfielder, yes,” Wenger said.

The lack of presence in this area was a factor in last season’s heavy defeats, although Wenger maintained that they were down to the collective lack of physicality and mobility. Mikel Arteta and Mathieu Flamini, he said, were two fine defensive midfielders and he added that he did not see Jack Wilshere as the answer in the position, in light of his appearance there on Monday night for England against Switzerland.

“I prefer Jack in a more advanced position, rather than in a deep-lying midfield role,” Wenger said. “If it works, it works and I am happy for him but I think he is capable of creating danger in the final third. He is provocative in his dribbling and I would like to use this quality.”

What was also interesting was Wenger’s praise for City, a club whose methods he has not always approved of. “They have done a remarkable job,” he said. “They do not look to work off the cuff. They look to have plans and the people who manage their club are very intelligent. They look like people who always try to anticipate what will happen next, and that is why they have done extremely well.”

The sense of anticipation will heighten at 12.45pm. Arsenal intend to make an early-season statement.

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