By Boris Mellor
April 13 2007

In spite of this being the longest winless League run under Wenger since November 2001 Arsene is still keen to stress that he stills believes in his players.

Whether Arsene is right or not is purely academic, for tomorrow’s game, there can be no waiting for maturation, it is a six pointer and a defeat would be very serious in the battle for fourth place.

To pay back Arsene's belief his players need to beat Bolton this weekend. No Wenger team has gone five without victory since between 14 November and 13 December 1998. But unlike that team Wenger believes this one is developing in the right way.

Arsene is not blaming bad luck, rather a need to develop maturity and to overcome the disappointment of an early exit from the CL. He is aware that people are questioning the ability of his players but  he has seen his team beat the best and lose to the worst – although that is evidence of the lack of maturity,  it is also proof that they have ability and can develop.

 

 I have looked at several replays of the West Ham game, the team played well – the team created chances, good chances, not scrappy ones, but you knew they wouldn’t score. Yes they made a sloppy mistake for the conceded goal, but if you don’t take your chances the opposition will score. They could have won 10-1 easily, but Bolton will be a lot tougher than the Hammers – the Hammers got lucky; the Trotters will not depend on luck to keep Arsenal out.

 

So it will be tough, the Gunners have to get the ball into the net anyway they can. If they fail to do that it will have nothing to do with Bolton being a “Bogey” team. For the Arsenal have an unbeaten home Premiership record against the Trotters, won four, and drawn three (quite a few teams have a better record against the Gunners without being named as a bogey) It is at the Reebok that the Gunners record is poor and Arsenal lost this season’s fixture there. However they knocked Bolton  out of the FA Cup with a 1-3 extra time victory in the fourth round replay at the Reebok, so the bogey tag doesn’t really hold.

 

There are no injuries, so there is a full squad to choose from, apart from Henry, RvP and Walcott.

 

Finally as Wenger has said confidence is hard to gain and easy to loose. I don’t see the point of booing a team for missing 27 chances. It’s frustrating for fans, but it is not a method for improving the team. It’s important that fans get behind the team on Saturday.

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