Arsenal-Mania

Wenger: We cannot afford any more losses

By Jonathan Chong on Monday, September 29, 2008

Past results
Date	Time	C	Opponent	F	A	R
Sep, 27	5:30 PM	P	Hull City (H)	1	2	Lost

Saturday's defeat to Hull City was Arsenal's second in a campaign that is only six games old and manager Arsčne Wenger has admitted that if his team are to mount a serious challenge, they cannot afford any more losses.

The Gunners also slumped to a defeat at Fulham earlier on in the campaign.

The Frenchman said: "You can never afford a defeat. I think we had a good opportunity to still be top the game and we're not.

"I believe at the end of the day if you imagine that we had the same level of concentration that Hull had we would've won the game because the technical difference was in our favour.

"They had a little bit extra, that was seen on the corner that they scored.

"I don't know it's very difficult to say [if they lost due to inexperience]. I believe what is important now is that we responded after Fulham and we must respond this time on Tuesday with a performance that shows our strengths. That's all you can do.

"Of course we are all disappointed, the dressing room is very shocked and quiet but its part of mental strength aswell to deal with that.

"We have to show how united we are on Tuesday night [against Porto]."

User Comments

11

bob

Posted on 30 Sep, 2008 at 11:28 PM - Reply

everyone wait till eduardo comes back, hopefully wenger has the guts to kick ade off the first team for him. The sooner wenger realises that vela and eduardo can finish 9 out of ade's 10 chances the more games we will win.
look out for vela he will become an excellent player.

10

David

Posted on 30 Sep, 2008 at 02:46 PM - Reply

jagajaga you are right! All Adebayor was waiting for were easy headers, goal mouth tap-ins, and clear cut chances, which he would only have scored one out of five opportunities anyway. Look at the offside he got caught in each game, apart from his physical presense, he is at most a CocoCola league striker. Shame on Wenger not to cash in on him this past summer and get a better finisher. Even Bendtner got better first touch than his. And Ade even wanted to get paid like King Henry in his days at Arsenal, don't even dream about it!

9

jagajaga

Posted on 30 Sep, 2008 at 07:45 AM - Reply

Arsenal played all the ball and provided all the killer passes to Adebayor but what does he do with them? he wasted them as usual. the man is a minus as far as am concerned. he should go. he doesn't track back, his touches are very poor, he has a very weak shot, accuracy is less than 20%. how can you explain a striker who needs ten chances before making one count.
Hull got close to our goal just about five times and they made two count. the man cousin who scored with the header only had that one chance. Giovanni had three and one made it into the roof of the net.
yes the defence may be weak in some places but i still believe that if the attack was potent enough the opposing team will be busy defending and picking balls out of their net rather than score us.
Arsenal are arguably the best attacking team on earth and we create more clear cut chances than most teams in Europe but it is the conversion ratio that worries me. we need a fox in the box and a replacement for the Togolese and the team will be back to winning ways. if we had the likes of Bent, Barbatov, Defoe, and a few others around the league am very sure the fellow would have scored more than 50 goals last season compared to Adebayors much celebrated 30 in all competitons.
please he who has Wengers ears should let him know this facts.

8

gooner 4 life

Posted on 30 Sep, 2008 at 07:22 AM - Reply

the loss was disgusting, i truly beleive that we dont have what it takes in terms of quality in depth i know this point has been stressed befor but we need a deadly striker..and a strong midfielder our midfield is the smallest and physically weakest in the premier league

7

ShifuArsenal

Posted on 29 Sep, 2008 at 09:13 PM - Reply

Arsenal players lost focus and got caught up in the hype. The squad as great potential and is capable of winning the EPL, CL or FA Cup. But all this potential will count for nothing if they don't win silverware. The defeat against Fulham was meant to be an awakeup call. How many wakeup calls do they need? Arsenal team is still a work in progress and will loss more games this season. Arsenal has got to ensure that they draw fewer games this season. Man U lost 5 games last season but still ended up with the EPL.

6

delboy

Posted on 29 Sep, 2008 at 08:03 PM - Reply

the problem with the present team is they got cocky. They believed hull would be in awe of them and only had to turn up to win. Adebayor was the biggest culprit. He's lazy minded and not a good finisher. Give bendner a chance up front as lead striker with RVP. It might make ade think about his attitude

5

Akaninyene

Posted on 29 Sep, 2008 at 06:12 PM - Reply

The problem we are having now is as a result of our failure to sign good players. flamini and hleb left andwe expected a gareth baarry or alonso. we need experience in he mid field else we would be garging for fourth place this season.pls lets buy we the window pens.

4

CharlieBranch

Posted on 29 Sep, 2008 at 05:38 PM - Reply

Gallas is getting away with murder in my eyes. that's two games he's cost us already with his complacency and yet he tries to blame the team. I thought I'd never say this but I hope Silvestre gets a run ahead of Gallas tomorrow, it will hopefully give him the kick up the ars* he needs.

3

Andrew James

Posted on 29 Sep, 2008 at 02:02 PM - Reply

we are lacking discipline on the field, why do the defence attack so much? Gallas & Toure seem to be attacking more than defending and to be honest the second goal was both Gallas and Toure's fault the both of them did not want to pick up the scorer which in my opinion is very poor

2

Rene Bruwer

Posted on 29 Sep, 2008 at 01:43 PM - Reply

The problems in terms of defence, central defensive midfield and our strike force which were raised off season, have come back to haunt us. The failure to purchase quality players in these positions in the transfer window will need to be rectified by January otherwise we will be contesting fourth place by the end of the 2008/9 campaign.

1

Arsenal09

Posted on 29 Sep, 2008 at 01:16 PM - Reply

Arsenal was all over very poor when it came to shoot, whe had so much time when we could have put the ball in the back of the net but never. Poor Very POOOOOOOOOOOOOOR