Arsène Wenger knows better than most how suddenly the negativity in modern football can grip. “It is a virus that travels very quickly and goes very slowly,” the Arsenal manager said. Few opponents have triggered it quite so readily in recent years as Swansea City and Wenger sees the visit of the Welsh club to the Emirates Stadium on Saturday afternoon as a defining moment for his team.
Arsenal have taken only one point from Swansea in the past four Premier League meetings at the Emirates Stadium and, when they were beaten 2-1 by them last March, it not only “killed” their title hopes – to use the word offered by Wenger – it unleashed a torrent of supporter fury.
Wenger’s team had entered that game on the back of the dismal 3-2 defeat at Manchester United and knew victory was essential. But, after leading through Joel Campbell, they lost their way and in front of a baying crowd there was a grim inevitability about the Swansea captain Ashley Williams’s 74th-minute winner. Thierry Henry, the Arsenal legend, said he had never known the Emirates Stadium fans to be as angry and impatient.
In the following match, Arsenal earned a fighting 2-2 draw at Tottenham Hotspur with 10 men and have lost only once in the league in 17 outings – the 4-3 home defeat against Liverpool on the opening day of this season. Wenger says “at the moment, the vibes are positive”. It will be important to keep them that way.
“We had a very negative experience with Swansea last year, which killed our opportunity to win the Premier League,” Wenger said. “We have a good opportunity to show we have learned from that and that we are capable of dealing with these kinds of opponents, when we are the favourites. We were not always capable of doing that last season and we want to show we have moved forward.”
Wenger had a question for his audience. How many league matches, he asked, had Arsenal lost away from home in 2016? The answer was one – against United. “When you listen to people, you’d never believe it,” Wenger said. It felt as though he were passing comment on the doomsday reactions to Arsenal defeats. There have been seven in all competitions this year – five at home.
“We have shown mental strength [since the Swansea defeat in March],” Wenger said. “That’s the only thing we can do. We can only think we have to create a positive environment and to do that, we have to perform. The rest, we have to ignore.
“You focus on what is important for you and what can help you – the way that the team plays. You accept the assessment of people around you. Fans are part of our game and they have the right to be happy or not to be happy.”