Wenger: Why the Carling Cup was not a priority

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Date	Time	C	Opponent	F	A	R	S
02 Dec	7:45 PM	LC	Manchester City (A)	0	3	Lost

Following last night's 3-0 defeat to Manchester City, manager Arsène Wenger has explained why he still does not feel that the Carling Cup is an important trophy to win.

It was a third defeat in a row for the Gunners, who have now conceded an alarming 6 goals in just two games. Important competition or not, you have to wonder what it means from a professional perspective when your defence is not as strong as it should be.

Wenger said: "We have not won a trophy since 2005 but I don't consider that if you win the Carling Cup we parade around and say we have won the trophy.

"For me it is a competition where we develop our young players. I don't believe that next season if we had won the Carling Cup I would say 'we won a trophy last year'.

"To play in the Quarter-Final or Semi-Final or Final of the Champions League is10 times more difficult to win the Carling Cup."

It's not whether the Carling Cup is important or not, it's the fact that there was a trophy to be won and we didn't put out a strong a side as we should have.

The fact that we conceded without a reply should be ringing alarm bells. We haven't scored in domestic games since Robin van Persie got injured and that's three games now.

City may have had a more experienced squad, but if we knew that they were going to put out a strong side why didn't we put a decent team out to avoid another heavy defeat?

It just seems a tad disrespectful to the 5,000 travelling fans who made the trip to Manchester. Were they making the trip knowing that we were going to essentially 'throw the game away'?

Wenger added: "They looked more dangerous than us in the final third and at the end of the day their quality offensively paid off and we have to swallow a defeat despite the fact that I believe in large patches of the game we played well.

"We lacked a little bit of pace and power to take advantage of the good movements we created. I believe as well our young payers are not used to playing with such intensity and after an hour we dropped a little bit.

"But it's a good experience and it was a difficult game and we were a bit unlucky as well with the goals they scored."

We have to bounce back against Stoke City now or it'll be glaringly obvious that there has been little improvement from last season.

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