Arsene admits pressure is rising. New deal on the table & Rotation for tomorrow confirmed…

Morning all.

Young Hector Bellerin has been offered a new contract. Smart move Arsenal, although I doubt him agreeing another four years will prevent Barcelona from sniffing around their old player any time soon. He must be enjoying life in the Arsenal fast lane right now and we can only hope that remains the case because this kid is only going to get better and he’s pretty darn good now..

Twenty years ago you could lose a game and people would say, ‘Next time Arsenal will play better’. Today you lose a game and it is always a crisis. – Arsène Wenger

I don’t suppose it’s just Arsenal fans who when having lost a game go into overdrive with criticism, but when we lose, it’s not always about the points dropped, it’s about how we have played. Like all of us, footballers are only human and will make the odd mistake during a work day (well, 90 minutes for them) but in football, one mistake can lead to three points dropped and that’s happened a bit too often over the last few years.

Arsène Wenger believes the pressure on players nowadays is greater than it has ever been before and looking at where we are right now, that pressure is rising.

Arsenal sit third in the Premier League, into the FA Cup semi-finals and we face one heck of a fight if we are to reach the quarter-finals of the Champions League. I can’t see the latter happening to be honest as going to Monaco needing three goals and a clean sheet will be nearly as difficult as climbing Mount Everest.

The manager does all he can to ease the pressure but there’s only so much he can say to them and after that, it’s down to them to take responsibility:

You have to stand up to be strong enough, to fight, to show that you have the courage and that you’re not inhibited because you’re under pressure, and that’s the difficulty of the modern player.

That has increased and the resistance to stress from the young players is immense today because everything is analysed. Every pass you make, every first touch, how far you run, how much you fight, everything.

The last bit of his comment is no doubt directed at the ‘know it all’s’ who sit behind a desk and type out some daft stats on certain players and print them in a newspaper article believing that just because a player covers 6 miles of the pitch during a game, he’s a hard worker. Poppycock I say, it’s what you do during a game, not how far you run.

Look at Danny Welbecks performance against Utd. I don’t think I’d be unkind or harsh to say that he was having a stinker on Monday night up front and nothing was going his way at all. Then, when it mattered, he did his job well and scored the winning goal but I’m sure if his stats for that game were analysed, they wouldn’t look pretty would they?

The reality is, that one goal stole the headlines and got Arsenal into the FA Cup semi-final and and of course, that victory gave us something we haven’t had in a long while, a victory at Old Trafford.

Not only will that have given Welbeck a whole lot of confidence but the entire club as a whole. Unlike if he had missed it, the pressure for him and the team would have risen enormously, just like it probably did for Ollie after the Monaco game. Thankfully, Ollie bounced back in the next game.

Tomorrow Arsenal have nothing to bounce back from, the players should be on a high, full of confidence and stress free after Mondays result as we face a West Ham side who have been struggling a bit of late. Let’s hope for some good football, plenty of goals and three big points for the home team…

Arsene Wenger will make a couple of changes from the side who won at Old Trafford:

I always rotate game by game but never more than two or three players. I will rest one or two without interrupting the balance of the team.

Maybe Theo Walcott will finally get a start….

That’s it for Friday, have a good day folks and no walking under ladders, not today…..