Why did Arsenal have to play 3 games in 6 days? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
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By Walter Broeckx
The draw at Wigan is still upsetting some Arsenal fans. Wenger is blamed for the changes he made. And in a way of course it is Wenger who is to blame as he made the decision.
And some Arsenal fans point at other teams who stuck to the same team and have won more points than us in the same games.
So lets us first get to the facts: Arsenal made 8 changes between the Chelsea home game and the Wigan away game, another 8 changes between the Wigan and Birmingham away game and got 7 points out of a possible 9.
Chelsea played mostly the same players in their games. An away game to Arsenal, a home game against Bolton and another home game against Villa resulting in 4 points out of 9.
Manchester United played much the same players with some rotation in it but not as much as Arsenal did and in one home game (Sunderland) and two away games (Birmingham and WBA) got also seven points out of nine. Against Birmingham they rotated only one player and against WBA four.
Manchester City played twice at home and one away game and got the full marks 9 out of 9. They rotated a bit but not as much as we did. About 5 players each time.
And the other team in the top four Tottenham also got nine points out of nine and also rotated not like we did. One change after the first game and one in the second.
So no conclusions can be made from this. Chelsea and Tottenham rotated the fewest players and yet they end up with the highest and the lowest points total. United rotated a little bit and got the same points as we. And Arsenal and City rotated the most and got 7 and 9 points. So to rotate or not to rotate? It doesn’t look very clear when you look at the numbers.
Now let us look at the games itself. A home game against Chelsea which we lost the last couple years. An away game to Wigan which we lost last year. And an away game to Birmingham which we never could win the last times we visited them. Last year we got 1 point out of 9 in those games. Now 7 points. That doesn’t look that bad.
Chelsea only managed to win their home game against Bolton after losing at the Emirates and from what I read in the reports it was a rather lucky win with some ref decisions going their way. And then the same players first made a great comeback at the end of the game against Villa to suddenly collapse in the extra time to only get a point. Maybe if Ancelotti could have done some rotation he would have got 7 points?
United won against a toothless Sunderland, then only managed a draw against Birmingham and then managed to win at WBA. How? Well people still are not over the fact that they escaped not only a penalty but also a definite red card after Neville made a foul as the last defender. And from then on went on to win it in a way like only United can win games I think.
Manchester City won their games but they did seem to get a little bit of help on the left, on the right and in the middle. But with 2 home games and with rather easy opponents nothing less than 9 points could be expected.
And also Tottenham didn’t have the difficult fixtures we had. Two home games against struggling sides like Fulham and Newcastle for the moment and an away win at Aston Villa is looking good in terms of the points but is what could and should have been expected from a side that has ambition.
I know all fixtures are difficult in the EPL but when you look at ours we had a game against the team that according the pundits would win the title after 6 games in the season. We had a game against a team that we always found difficult to beat and most of all we had our games within 6 days.
And here you can find the trouble. We were the only team that had to play those 3 (difficult) games in 6 days. All the other teams had 7 days to play their games. United had 7 days, Tottenham had 7 days, Chelsea had 7 days and Manchester City had 7 days. And this was our biggest problem for me.
Playing with only one day between two games is something that can be done. It is not something you want to do. Because it means that you almost get no rest between the games. But one could risk not to rotate.
Chelsea didn’t rotate as they have nobody to rotate with (their changes were to cover for injury) and they paid the price. They lost 5 points.
United rotated a bit but when they had to play at Birmingham with the same squad they lost it at the end of the game, or better said they lost victory in the finale minutes. Maybe the legs were gone by then to hang to the 3 points? Maybe a bit more rotation would have helped?
And for us there was another problem with the game we had to play in Birmingham. Because as a result of the fixture list we again had one day’s less rest than other teams. The other top teams (apart from Chelsea of course) played on Tuesday and then had a rest until Saturday. We had one day less as we had to play Wednesday evening.
So we even didn’t have a full 48 hours between the first two games, but we also had one day less between game 2 and 3. One could say that the fixture list didn’t do us any favours. As it already didn’t do us any favours after each CL game with 5 tough away fixtures (Sunderland, Chelsea, Man City, Aston Villa and Manchester United). But as we all know the FA and the EPL and the other parties involved in the EPL this will have been pure coincidence. Of course it was.
So how on earth could Wenger have played the same players in those 3 games in 6 days? Is there anyone out there who believes that Van Persie could and should have played them all? He would been out for a few weeks by now if he would have done this. The same goes for Djourou who is still in his recovery from a one year being out with an injury. And Djourou also has had a bad record when it came to muscle injuries in the past. Cesc was suspended. And with a bit of a good ref we still would have won the Wigan game. With so many players just coming back form injuries playing them in all 3 games could have killed us and the rest of our season.
But for some fans it is much easier to blame the manager for his rotation which was forced upon him by whoever makes the fixture list. It wasn’t Wenger who gave the not existing penalty in favour of Wigan, it was ref Poorbert who did it. It was the same ref that was blind when they fouled Theo and when the smashed the ball away.
For now, thanks to the rotation we have 7 points from these 3 difficult games (and yes I would have liked all the 9 points) and given the circumstances this was a good job done. And most of all as is reported today: we have no further injuries (apart from Diaby) from those games. And this was also a very important task for Wenger: keeping the players fit during this terrible period in which we as the only team in the EPL had to play 3 games in less than 6 whole days.
If you do want to protest against something: protest against the people who make the fixture list and who have given us (and Chelsea partly) a handicap in this week.
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