Wenger – We must defy the odds
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger is confident that his side can ‘defy all the odds’, as they prepare to face Swansea City at the Emirates Stadium on Wednesday evening.
The Frenchman has come under plenty of scrutiny over the last couple of weeks due to poor performances, and after his side failed to take any points away from Old Trafford once again, losing out to the Red Devils by three goals to two, their title credentials have been called into question.
Arsenal, despite beating Leicester City a couple of weeks ago in dramatic circumstances, are now five points behind the league leaders going into Wednesday evening’s game and could find themselves even further behind if they fail to step up.
Wenger, speaking to the media ahead of his side’s game, as reported by the club’s official website, admitted that they ‘must have a good week’.
What we want to do is defy all the odds that are against us at the moment.
The best way to do it is to fight together for that. We have come out of a bad week so we want to have a good week now.
It’s as simple as that and that’s why you love competition. A bad week is not permanent, it’s what you make of it and how you respond. That’s the beauty of sport. Things change quickly one way or the other. That’s beautiful as well.
We are professional and we want to focus on how we respond to the defeat. It can happen. We lost 3-2 at Manchester United, we are not happy with the result but if you analyse the game we had two lapses of focus that we paid for. That made the game difficult for us after.
We gave a lot against Barcelona and the disappointing outcome certainly had an impact on our belief against Manchester United, but we want to focus on the positives and recover from it. We want to give our best from now until the end of the season.
The Gunners take on the struggling Swans on Wednesday, and Wenger believes it will be even tougher than usual because the visiting side are scrapping for survival.
Swansea want to secure their position in the Premier League so we expect them to fight very hard, be very committed and well organised defensively. They are a good side who find themselves in a position where they certainly did not expect to be at the start of the season. They lost confidence with a bad start and after that, in the Premier League, it’s difficult.