To Arsène Wenger’s mind, his Arsenal team have been guilty of squandering plenty of points this season but nothing grates quite so much as the three “offered” to Manchester United at Emirates Stadium last November. “That was the big game that we threw away,” the manager said.
Wenger has stewed on the 2-1 defeat and it is little wonder. It was a match in which everything went wrong, down to the detail of Jack Wilshere’s ankle injury, from which he has yet to recover. An Arsenal fan was so frustrated he threw red wine at the United bench.
Every team can always use three extra points but Arsenal look at the Premier League table and wonder whether they might have been in title contention with a win that day over United. It adds a further frisson to the eagerly awaited FA Cup quarter-final at Old Trafford on Monday night, with the desire of Arsenal’s players to right a perceived wrong further firing their motivation.
“Look, we lost some points in this Premier League that we should never have lost,” Wenger said. “That is one game that we threw away. In the first-half the game should have been over. And, after, when you look again at the way we conceded the first goal, and the second goal as well … we offered them the game.”
The match seemed to highlight all of the principal flaws in this Arsenal team. They dominated the opening 35 minutes as United toiled but they could not take their chances; they ceded little but the opposition still scored and, once behind to an unlucky own goal, they overcommitted and were exposed on the counterattack. Wayne Rooney’s breakaway finish to put United 2-0 up on 85 minutes was his team’s first shot on target.
“We wanted to come back and forgot a little bit our principles,” Wenger said at the time. “If you stay at 1-0, you have a chance. We lack a bit of maturity defensively and we pay for it. The emotional side of the game takes over.”
Sound familiar? Wenger said pretty much the same thing after the 3-1 Champions League last-16 first-leg defeat to Monaco at Emirates on the Wednesday before last and there is the sense his comments following any major defeat could have been cut and pasted from the previous one.
Wenger is desperate to fashion a different script at Old Trafford, where Arsenal have lost nine and drawn one in 10 visits, but his last game in Manchester might provide him with the template.
When Arsenal beat City 2-0 in the league on 18 January, Wenger was praised for his deployment of Francis Coquelin as the most defensive player in a three-man midfield. Santi Cazorla and Aaron Ramsey were the others, and Wenger can be expected to go for the same again. Ramsey is fit after his latest hamstring injury and he is pushing for a return to the starting XI.
Arsenal travel with confidence. They remain prone to Arsenal-style disasters – Monaco being a glaring case in point – but they have stabilised since the first half of the season.
At the time of the United defeat on 22 November, they were living their worst start since 1982-83 and there would be another morale-sapping defeat at Stoke City two weeks later. But, since then, they have won 14 of 18 matches in all competitions.
Wenger said, with particular reference to the Manchester City game, that the team “know we can do well away from home”.
The manager talked about the shot in the arm that was winning the FA Cup last season and said the Old Trafford tie represents a key psychological moment of the season. “Yes, of course,” he said. “It is a big game and every big game has an impact subconsciously in the belief of the team.”