Defiant manager Arsene Wenger insists there’s no crisis at Arsenal.
The Gunners are going to Athens for Tuesday’s final Champions League Group B clash with Olympiacos after a 2-0 home defeat by Swansea which was preceded by protests from angry fans and followed by reports of dressing room bust-ups as well as questions over Wenger’s long-term position.
Wenger, however, used Monday night’s press conference ahead of what is effectively a dead rubber with qualification already secure for the last 16 to focus away from the negative headlines and banners featuring the club’s crest as a broken cannon.
“You should look a little bit at the statistics and not only read the newspapers,” he said.
“I only have one pressure and that is to win the next football game and to play the football I love.
“All the rest, I don’t think that affects me at all. You would be surprised,” said Wenger, who has left several first team players, including England duo Theo Walcott and Jack Wilshere, back in London and will pack the bench with youngsters.
“Nothing really happened (after Swansea). That the players are not happy after the game, do you want them to do a dance after we lost? This group of players is very strong, very highly motivated, has a very good spirit and they want to win. If they don’t win, of course they are upset.
“I am more worried if I see players who laugh in the shower after a game that we lost.
“We are in a job where the next game is the only important thing, that is how you can show how good you are.”
Wenger continued: “The situation is at the moment we are behind in the Championship, we want to make ground back, we are qualified for 13 consecutive years in the Champions League, we are qualified in the quarter-finals of the Capital One Cup and we have our chances in the FA Cup like everyone else.
“We have many challenges and that is what we want to focus on.”
Despite Arsenal enduring the worst Premier League campaign under the Frenchman’s tenure, with the Gunners down in 10th place and facing an uphill battle to get back into the top four, Wenger maintains all is not yet lost.
Asked if he would swap places with Manchester City, who failed to reach the knockout stages of the Champions League once again, the Arsenal manager said: “No, for one simple reason, we have played 15 games, so we have 23 games to come back on them, but once you are out of a cup competition, you cannot come back in again.
“We can make up the distance in the league but in the Champions League, you are either in or out.”
There have been calls for Wenger to spend big in the January transfer window.
The Arsenal manager, though, insists his attention must first be on getting consistent results now rather than what might happen in the new year.
“What is important now is to do well until the 1 January. What happens in January, we will see if we need to something and we will do it,” he said.
When pressed on whether Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard was on his shopping list for 2013, Wenger replied: “We are in the country of Socrates. He said: ‘I know that I know nothing’, and that is a bit like football.”
Wenger is under contract until 2014. The 63-year-old maintains he is not looking past the here and now with Arsenal.
He says the likes of 18-year-old forward Zak Ansah, 19-year-old Swiss defenders Sead Hajrovic and Elton Monteiro as well as young English striker Chuba Akpom, 17, will all learn from the experience at the white-hot Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium on Tuesday.
“It gives us an opportunity to see some players who have played less,” said Wenger.
“The pressure is a bit less big, but we will still want to win the game because we want to finish the job well and finish first in the group – we still have a chance to do that.”