Wenger not giving up on the title

Arsene Wenger refused to concede the title following Arsenal’s 0-0 draw with West Ham. Although he did admit that right now Manchester City are too far ahead, Arsenal will not give up until it is no longer possible to make up ground.

“I don’t want to talk about that. That’s good to make headlines but we have to focus on the next game and City is too far away to talk about the title at the moment. But it is one thing to be far away and another thing to give up. You don’t give up. The job is to fight as long as we can and give our best. It’s not to focus too much on anything else. We want to fight, our job is to fight and to continue to give everything and see where we finish. City is City. You know very well what is going on. We faced that problem with City like everyone else in the league.”

Arsenal are currently 19 points adrift of City so the title is all but over. To conced however, could harm the clubs chances of a top four finish, which they are only a single point behind.

Draw left Wenger frustrated

The Arsenal boss also went on to say how frustrated the draw against West Ham left him. They have been on a tough run of fixtures at the moment and Wenger went on to say that it is no wonder they are playing in such a defensive way. He also sighted the fact that West Ham had the advantage of playing on Saturday lunch time at the weekend where as Arsenal played 24 hours later. This, he thinks, helped them defend more decisively and help keep the Arsenal attack at bay.

“There’s some draws which are frustrating, it’s one of them, yes. We had a lot of the ball. It was 10 against 10 in the final third, and we couldn’t find an opening. It was a little bit for the fact they defended very well. They are in a highly-defensive and focused phase at the moment. They did that against City, against Chelsea and did that tonight. We lacked maybe a little bit of sharpness as well in the final third. We had many different good opportunities. I think that’s where you see, maybe if they had played on Sunday and we had played on Saturday it might have been different on that front, because they had more physical resources to defend with a lot of decisiveness.”

Lack of Sanchez goals not the issue

With Arsenal having scored only twice in their past three games, questions were starting to be asked about Alexis Sanchez’s commitment to the side. Arsene Wenger doesn’t see it this way though and is in full support of the Chilean. He believes that it is a concern for the whole side and is not right to single out one player.

“In a situation like that you do not want to focus on one player, you focus more on the collective attitude of the team and keep them focused on the quality of our game. We create chances. [The goals] will come. It’s difficult to say he’s had a dip. He tried. It was difficult because they defended very well as well. The 33 shots on goal and the chances we missed against Manchester United maybe had a little bit of an impact. We have to continue to focus on the quality of our game and not to focus too much on the fact that we are not ruthless at the moment. That will come back by not making too big a problem of it.”

The chances are coming for Arsenal but they have just been unable to find the net in recent weeks. Everyone will be hoping this can change at home to Newcastle at the weekend.