Arsene Wenger admitted after Arsenal’s 4-3 victory over Leicester on Friday night that he was relieved.
Speaking after Arsenal’s chaotic win over Leicester at the Emirates on Friday, Wenger admitted that it was a relief to win because the Gunners had prepared extensively for the match and a loss could have been massively detrimental.
“I felt that to lose would have been terrible for us because we had such good preparation and to sit there on Saturday morning and think we had lost at home would have been terrible,” Wenger said, reports Arsenal.com.
“It is a relief and I believe as well a reminder to the players that they have hurdles on the way and that we can get round it, like tonight so that is quite positive.
“After that, let’s take it game by game – go to Stoke – then to Liverpool, who are as well one of the teams who want to win the Premier League.
“To win like we did will only strengthen [the belief] and overall we have good ingredients in the squad and it is a good opportunity again to show it away from home.”
As Wenger says, the team does need to go back to the drawing board on several key areas. However, at least they managed to weather the storm for the time being.
Arsenal don’t have the best record on the opening day of the season, especially at the Emirates, so at least they seem to have gotten that out of the way.
In fact, they’ve failed to win 12/25 of their opening day Premier League fixtures.
The Gunners travel to Stoke next weekend, which is a notoriously difficult fixture, and if they continue to defend set pieces in the way they did against the Foxes, they’ll be punished.
What’s more, Arsenal had 27 shots, 10 of which were on target, yet only managed to score four and two of those came in the final eight minutes of the game. Therefore, work needs to be done from the back all the way to the front.
Except for Olivier Giroud. He’s perfect and doesn’t need to do anything.
Hopefully, the kinks will get ironed out before the trip up north next weekend.