Isn’t hindsight a beautiful thing? Or at least it is when it comes to someone like Arsene Wenger.
I mean fair play, we didn’t exactly cover ourselves in glory at the weekend – in fact we were bloody awful – and maybe that made him feel his little rant about our money (yes, again!) was justified. Maybe he even felt our defeat – against the side Arsenal had lost to midweek – gave him grounds to use it as leverage to big his side up. But then obviously he hadn’t anticipated that side collapsing against Wigan despite a 2-0 advantage.
You see, before their embarrassment yesterday, Wenger was ranting “We are the most on the up considering the other teams. The only difference is that (Roman) Abramovich can go out tomorrow and change 10 players because he has the financial potential to do it. But if Chelsea were run like any other club, they couldn’t do it. That’s the difference. We are going up and they are coming down, that’s for sure, because they have six or seven players of over 30 years. They will not go up. But Abramovich can say in the summer that he will buy seven players of around 24 years of age — and we are in the same race again.”
Don’t get me wrong, obviously I won’t be disagreeing we have too many over 30s and it’s a balance we do need to redress, but replacing ten players in the summer, is he sure about that? Our squad needed looking at last summer but I don’t remember Roman spending drastic amounts then, and given that we clearly have no intention of getting into financial battles we could never win against City in the transfer market, I can’t foresee any massive spending spree this time around either.
Anyway, whilst even after losing to Spurs we remained a point clear of United at the top of the table, with the FA Cup final to come, before the defeat to Wigan that’s left his side six points adrift of us, Wenger insisted “We play at the top. We could make 86 points, which would give you a chance every year to win the title. So it has not been an exceptional year — just that the competition is high.”
Again he made an arse of himself though because for a start, the most they could’ve picked up even before Wigan was 83 points anyway and having failed to do so, have put themselves in a position where winning their remaining games would only give them a total of 80.
Enough for a side on the up Arsene? I think not.
Blue is the colour
