Arsene Wenger on Thursday morning faced the media for his pre match press briefing ahead of his premier league game against Burnley. This is the full transcript of his pre match press conference. Enjoy.
Good morning Arsene, let’s start with the team news. Abou Diaby, Mikael
Arteta and Jack Wilshere all came through that under 20’s game on Tuesday.
Yeah they came through well. They
were quite at a good level physically, and they should be available from now on
until the end of the season hopefully.
In other news, how is Mathieu Debuchy?
Debuchy is all right. I can only
play 3 players over 21, so he’s physically fit and ready, lacks a bit match
competitive edge, but overall, he has no medical problem
How are Koscielny and Szczesny?
Koscielny will have a test today
(Thursday) to see how far we can go with him. He had a scan yesterday that
looks quite good but the real test will be outside today.
It’s Burnley on Saturday. What sort of test are you expecting?
Look, Burnley is a tough test for
everybody. You shouldn’t look at the table because they started slowly but
recently they have played very well against the big teams in the league, they
are quite efficient at home because they have made 18 points out of 26 points
at home, and therefore, we have to make sure that we produce the expected
performance on the commitment, on the focus and on the quality of our game.
How much of an impact do you think Jack might be able to make in the
closing weeks of the season?
Everybody can have a big impact until
the end of the season, Jack included.
Is he the sort of player who is able to come back from injury and reach
the level that he needs?
Look that depends on the game,
depends on fitness, depends on the availability and the need of the team.
Everybody is exactly rated the same, and you respect everybody and you want
everybody to just contribute to the team.
In terms of his future here, we’ve seen stories about Manchester City
having interest in him. What would your message be?
Look, you can imagine my answer
and send it to sky sports news, you have enough experience, and we are not in a
position anymore where we have to sell our best players.
You’ve won the last 7 league games in a row; it’s the best form in this
country and across Europe. Is there any element of frustration that it’s
happening just a little bit too late for you in terms of the title?
Unfortunately, we don’t decide
when it happens. The target of your work during the season is that your team becomes
always stronger, and we have still many chances until the end of the season.
It’s interesting that we are in a good form, and it’s interesting that we have
a good team dynamic and hopefully we can maintain that until the end of the
season, then we will see where we find ourselves, because we look behind us,
people are chasing us, in front of us, there is quite a good distance with
Chelsea, but we will work very hard to reduce that.
So you’ve won your last 7, if you win your next 7, you will finish with
84 points, but that’s only won the league once in the last decade.
Let’s win the next one.
The fact that Chelsea have still got to play you, they’ve got to play
Manchester United, they still got to play Liverpool. Does that keep this title
race compelling and interesting?
Look, they have a difficult
schedule, we have a difficult schedule. What we can do is only to master our
own schedule and its difficult to have a speculation on that, what we want is
to go as high as we can until the end of the season, give our best. We are as well
in the semi final of the FA cup, we are in an important moment of the premier
league season, and it’s a period where you just show your quality by focusing
on your next game, and maintain the quality.
Last season, you finished 7 points behind the champions, at the moment,
you are 7 points behind the leaders, and exactly the same number of points from
the same number of games at this stage, and yet, this does fell like a season
of genuine progress.
I believe yes we had a difficult
start this season, contrary to last season you know when we had a strong start,
we had a difficult start this season, and we had many players out for 4 to 5
months after the world cup, and since we have found back our cohesion with everybody
back, I believe we have moved forward, yes.
That’s something you’ve said all season that when you’ve got all your
players back, then you will see what this team is capable of.
That’s what we can show now until
the end of the season, but the recent results have shown progress with
convincing results and with consistency. What is the most important witness for
quality and we want of course to continue to progress and to improve. We can
learn from victory as well, and everything worked perfectly for us in our last
game, and we want to learn from that.
If you can’t win the title, how much an achievement would finishing
runners-up be for the first time in a decade?
I leave other people to judge. I
give my best to win the games, and leave the judgment of the quality of my work
to other people. I just can commit 100% to use everything I know to help my
team to perform.
Arsene, how difficult is it to bring back somebody like Jack Wilshere
to start when you are just winning every game?
Look, I do not want to speak
about individual selection, there is no individual cases in there. There’s 25
individual cases who all deserve to play, but we are all here to serve arsenal
football club, and that’s it.
They say you never change a winning team.
There’s never a “never” in
football.
15 wins out of the lat 17. What do you think has been the reason? You
talked about players coming back, but then, you’ve also lost players a few
months with injuries. What do you think is the single cause as to why you’ve
got that record since January?
Team spirit, the attitude of the
players, the quality of the players, and the balance of the team.
And when you go to bed at night, you’re 7 points behind Chelsea, do you
sometimes have dreams that they might just fold up and you might just get in
there? They do have to play the likes of Liverpool and Manchester United don’t
they?
Look, I have enough experience to
know I have to live with reality you know, and reality is points and the next
game, and the dreams are for people, for everybody. We have all dreams every
night, and when I wake up in the morning, I have to come here and make sure we
give everything to win the next game.
Arsene, the Manchester derby. Do you have a preference who you would like
to win?
Not really, because the draw is
not bad as well for us.
Coming into the season, people talked about how you needed an out and
out striker, how impressed have you been with Olivier Giroud that he has been
able to step up?
I believe he is in outstanding
form since he has come back, he has improved the quality of his game, and we
have plenty of strikers. We have Walcott, Welbeck, Sanchez, Giroud, plus the
players who are out on loan at the moment; Sanogo, Akpom. As you say, you want me to play everybody,
and on top of that, you tell me to buy some more players, the 2 together don’t
work.
You said progress has been made this season. How far away is this team
from winning the premier league title?
At the moment, 7 points plus one
game in hand.
Is Woljciech fit?
Wolcjiech has a problem. He has a
test today, he has a good chance to be available for Saturday.
Is it a long term problem?
No, it was a bruised rib, so that
should be okay.
Are you surprised at how well Hector Bellerin has settled into the
side?
Yes, I’m surprised how quickly he
has settled in, and that is down to personality, and I’m convinced that of
course he has adapted very well. He has had some difficult starts at Dortmund,
but he has recovered very well, and he has improved. He’s only 20 years old now,
and him and chambers are 20 years old, and they had 2 outstanding seasons
together.
Do you view his long term future here? Because obviously he came from Barcelona.
He came at the age of 16, so I
consider him as a real arsenal player.
Back to Jack Wilshere, how frustrating has it been this last 6 months?
Every player who doesn’t play is
very frustrated when he cannot perform, but Diaby has been out for a year,
Walcott has been out for a year, that’s difficult cases, and Wilshere he has
played games this year, he has played many games this year, and he has been
out, but not as long as Walcott, or Diaby.
Do you have the feeling with Jack that he wants to fulfill his full
potential here, rather than another club?
Look, I already answered this
question.
He has been here since he was 9 years old.
Yes, that’s why I answered
already the question. We cannot make a case for any headline of any newspaper
in a press conference from things that are not true.
Arsene, you face Burnley, they’ve won more than any other team in the
league, they have more sprint in their team than any other team in the league.
Is the key to that game going to be hard-work then?
Of course, you have to be
available for a physical performance because every year, they are there, and on
the rest you want to produce the quality of performance that is expected from
us on the technical side, but you have first to fight with them physically,
that’s for sure.
On your team, do you think you are at your best when you are chasing?
We are at our best when everybody
is focused to play for the team and everybody is at a good level of individual
performance, that’s when we are at our best. Is that down when we are chasing
or not, I just think we are at a stage of the season where we took off in
January really because we had everybody nearly available and that made us more
efficient, and we had maybe a better team balance as well in attacking and
defending than we had until January.
Is it now the case the case that the players have to understand that
you can’t fit everyone into the team? It is a case of competition and this is
the way it’s gonna be if they want to stay at a top club competing at top
level?
Look, I’m surprised you are
asking me this question because it’s just our job. We are all in a fantastic position
and our job is competing, so you cannot say you have to accept to compete, it’s
just if we cannot compete, we have nothing to do in this job.
Going back to Giroud. Do you think now he is playing his best football
since he arrived in England?
Yes, because he is improving. I
believe that the target of everybody when you wake up in the morning is to be
better, to make sure at night, you are better than the day before, and that’s
again the essence of our job, it makes you improve every day. If you are not
capable to think like that, you are in the wrong job, and he has accepted that,
and he has the right focus to improve.
His goal scoring record has been outstanding since he arrived. Ian Wright
was saying last week that if he carries on the way he’s going, he sees no
reason why he couldn’t go on to break his record in years to come.
That will be difficult you know,
Ian Wright, Thierry Henry, they are quite high there, so he has a long way to
go, he arrived a bit late as well, but I wish him that he maintains first his
record, after we see how far he can go.
Comments
Post a Comment