Van Persie: We need to play rough if need be

Striker Robin van Persie has admitted that him and his team mates need to start putting the pretty football to one side and start winning ugly if the need arises.

There has been one constant criticism of manager Arsène Wenger's sides, in that opponents can always get overly physical with us and our game starts to break down.

van Persie wants to put that perception to rest and says that the players just need to start 'giving back' when they're being kicked all over the park.

And we certainly can't count on protection from referees, so it's time to send a message back that you can no longer kick Arsenal around and expect to get away with it.

van Persie said: "I just think we need to toughen up.

"We need to make it clear to people: 'if you want to play football, we can play football. If you want to play hard, we can play hard.'

"We can do that, we have it within ourselves, but we need to do it consistently - because if we don't, we lose points and give the wrong message.

"You can see the other teams are all improving. We need some here and there too, we need a couple of players and we need to go ahead with that.

"You look at teams like Man City and Spurs - they are all coming up now.

"This year was an open league, but you never know what will happen next season. I think everyone realises that we need a bit of help in a few areas."

It seems that since the departure of the likes of Tony Adams, Martin Keown and Patrick Vieira did teams start kicking us around, and it certainly doesn't help when you have players like Emmanuel Eboue who do go to ground a little too easily.

The perfect response to physical provocation on the pitch is of course to show that your game is not affected, but there are times when you have to give as good as you get, and that will certainly help some of our more fragile midfielders.

User Comments

User Comments

• Got something to say?
• Read comments

Vs chelsea