By Boris Mellor
April 8 2007

Wenger believes that Arsenal could have scored 10 against the Hammers, and that each miss put more pressure on the next player to take a shot.

Wenger is well aware that poor shooting is to blame, but he feels it would not make sense to name players in public as it would just damage fragile confidence even further.

 

What he needs is a confidence trick, like the Scottish manager whose team was losing 4-0 when one of his players was knocked out and concussed. The player came round and said “I don’t know who I am boss”, the boss replied you are Pele and pushed him back onto the pitch.

 

Wenger is certainly going to have to weave that kind of psychological magic for the next game just like he did before taking on Manchester United away with Arsenal just a few points from the bottom. It’s interesting that West Ham changed to 4-5-1 because of the weight of Gunners pressure. In doing so they defeated a team that had started very well. Arsenal will need to be as obdurate on Tyneside.

 

Newcastle lost their unbeaten 9 match run on the 31st March, and the Gunners lost at Fortress Grove this Saturday. The Gunners have lost their last two games away, and Saturday was their 3^rd Premiership loss in a row.

 

However although recent results have been poor Liverpool is the only one of the last three games which the team deserved to lose, for the rest they have played well. The problem is quite simple the team cannot score, and the defence cannot keep a clean sheet.

Liverpool was exceptional in that the Gunners conceded four goals, and clearly the whole team, apart from Adebayor, was pants. But in all the other games the motivation was there but not a clinical finish. The lack of any finishing ability means that the goal that Arsenal always concede, always at the worst possible moment, becomes magnified in importance. At Liverpool it was four minutes into the game, at Everton in the very last minute of the game, and on Saturday just at the end of the first half.

 

Clearly there is a problem of a  lack of concentration and clinical finishing. But Wenger will not panic – he knows his team played well on Saturday, indeed I can’t remember them starting that brightly in a long time. He will need to keep their morale up, try and improve their shooting without letting the team become obsessed with their failure to score. Easy isn’t it?

 

Arsenal are going through a goal drought and it’s hard to know when it will end, but if Aston Villa who have scored only 32 goals this season can win away at Blackburn there must be hope. Mind you it’s the hope I can’t stand – as long as there hope I will be glued to the box watching them, if there was no hope I could go out enjoy the bank holiday.

 

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