We Cannot Expect Teams To Gift Us Points

Another week, more of the same. This time, it was "10 men behind the ball" Sunderland that frustrated us and left Arsene Wenger feeling more than a little hard done by. There were the usual "goal that should have been" complaints, and our old failings have been exposed again. It was obvious that they never really did go away, despite claims by Wenger that the kids were now physically tougher to balance their footballing talent.

Many of the players are simply not good enough to win anything, other than a trophy for eye catching football. Wenger must do more than getting his players to stick to a beautiful game philosophy, that having the mentality to kill off games would also be required if they wanted to end years of frustration and trophy-less woe.

We also cannot expect teams like Sunderland to allow us to play our football, or even try matching us on the field by passing it around instead of putting 10 men across their goalmouth to protect it. Some of the complaints and frustrations voiced by Wenger have bordered on the immature and naive, and he must be really losing it if he were to believe teams with limited resources and playing ability would try to beat us at our own game. Their priority is to survive and hang on in the English Premiership, not to please students of the game.

There are reasons to be optimistic about the result though, disappointing to say the least. At least the lads did not give up and managed to secure a point. But honestly, there isn't anyone, apart from Wenger, who seriously believes that we can still win the league this season. He could adopt a softer approach and just praise the players for their efforts after a good game, and not blow it out of proportion each time when that situation comes along, by telling every reporter in the room that we can still win the league. Or is Wenger trying to do a Mourinho now and deflect attention off his underperforming players?