Arsene Wenger Still Making Excuses For Arsenal's Unsuccessful Season

Filed under: Arsenal, Premier League, Football

As a learned Frenchman, Arsene Wenger, Arsenal's manager since 1996, will be well aware of a famous saying, "Qui s'excuse s'accuse." Meaning, "who excuses himself accuses himself". So Wenger's tirade at a press conference a couple of days before his team's belated victory at Blackpool, following a long, embarrassing string of failure, looked very much like an unsuccessful attempt to explain his team's inadequacies a way.

Dumped out of the FA Cup, beaten at Wembley in the final of the League Cup, humiliated in Barcelona, in the Champions League, when Arsenal couldn't contrive a single strike on goal, there was surely good reason to see the team in trouble.

Relative trouble perhaps, since despite this string of poor results, they are still in touch with the top of the Premier League. But the 3-1 victory at Blackpool, which came almost concurrently with the news that the American billionaire, Stan Kroenke, had bought a huge controlling share in the club, was hardly scintillating. Blackpool could and probably should have had a couple of penalties, which would have negated the Gunners' 2-0 half time lead. Arsenal's defence looked anything but watertight.

Actually, there might have been still a third penalty, with a crucial sending off, when the 41 year old German keeper, Jens Lehmann, called from the bench when Manuel Almunia was injured in the kick in, palpably brought down DJ Campbell, only for the referee Lee Mason at least to get this right, by allowing play to run on and Blackpool to score.

Lehmann, Wenger surprisingly admitted on television afterwards was brought to the club with no intention to play him. And so rusty had he looked, a few days earlier, when playing for the reserves at Wigan that you might have believed it. But to give Lehmann his due, overall in the second half he looked impressively competent.

How ironic to remember when four years back, Kroenke wanted to buy into the club, Peter Hill-Wood, the chairman, last in the distinguished family line, which had served in that roles since the 1920s, had spurned Kroenke as "not our sort." Only within weeks, to be forced to eat humble pie, flying to the states to beg Kroenke to join the board. Which he forgivingly did.

 

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Source: http://www.fanhouse.co.uk/2011/04/12/arsene-wenger-arsenal-stan-kroenke-football/

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