Just Arsenal News

Arsene Wenger has been talking about why his Arsenal team have thrown away so many points from winning positions this season, no less than when going 1-0 up in the 98th minute against Liverpool, or twice holding two-goal leads against Tottenham but only coming away with one point from both games.

Wenger believes that the blueprint for holding on to leads is to play calmly and stop your nerves taking over. He was asked directly if, because of their record this season, the players became scared when they went in front.

“Exactly!” Wenger said. “It is a vicious circle problem and you can only deal with that with calm and by dominating your nerves,”

“We try to get the players to focus on continuing to play in a calm way but we must as well give some credit to the opponents. For example Liverpool was a typical nervy problem. Tottenham I must say they have quality up front.

“There are a lot of things you need to keep leads, first of all experience and calm. Our defenders are under pressure because they are criticised for not holding on for results. That makes the problem a little bit worse. I feel what is important is to continue to play whatever the score is. I feel we need to keep our nerves more and communicate better.”

He was then asked if the nervousness was also caused by the players lacking the much-talked-about “winning mentality”, and Wenger reminded the press that they hadn’t lost (in the League) for a long long time.

“I would say we are on a 16-game unbeaten run in the Premier League so at least we don’t have a losing mentality,” he said.

“It’s down to us to transform the draws into a winning habit. I understand that your job in the media is to create crisis after crisis but I have distance from that. When you are on a 16-game unbeaten run, with the quality of the Premier League, the situation is not as black as you paint it.

“We were 1-0 up in the 98th minute against Liverpool, it’s difficult to say that you can predict what will happen after that. You can never legislate for what is very important. You can make sure you produce an excellent performance. If you produce excellent performance after excellent performance you will win the games.”

Bolton away tomorrow is a good time to have one of those “excellent performances” to give the Gunners another confidence boost ahead of next weeks crunch game against Man United.