Yesterday during Arsene Wenger’s press conference he made the following statement

 ”I have had groups who had fantastic results who were less serious than these players, believe me. We won trophies with players who were less focused than this team.

“Of course these players are hurting. You think they don’t care and they go home (after Bradford) and think they had a fantastic game? They do care.

“The difference is that we have created a new team. I believe that some players have come in, some players have come back from injuries and we have to show now until the end of the season that we have the quality that I think we have.

“We have not kicked on, that’s true. But we have rebuilt a team this year and we’ll see where we finish.

“At the moment, we have qualified for the Champions League knock-out stages for 13 years on the trot. When I listen to you (in the media), it must be a mistake there – ‘Why is this team in this spot?’ It sounds like we should be in the Championship.

“At the moment, you have to take a little bit of distance before making a definite judgement on what we are capable of doing.

“No other team has done that in the Champions League. At the moment we are not happy with what we have produced. But we will turn it around before the end of the season.”

It is the first paragraph that I wish to concern myself with here, the one where he says

 ”I have had groups who had fantastic results who were less serious than these players, believe me. We won trophies with players who were less focused than this team.”

This is being reported in The Mirror as

Arsene Wenger claims he has won trophies with worse Arsenal teams than his current generation.

It is also being spread around Twitter as if this is actually what he said, and I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure you can be both rubbish and focused, though I grant you this is not what Wenger meant. One influential Arsenal supporter, even when the difference was highlighted, refused to clarify the matter so it will soon pass in to fact.

I’m not entirely sure what people want him to say? A team which is so low on confidence is not going to benefit from their manager telling the world that they are rubbish, so he tries to show them that he is behind them in public. Would you really have it any other way?

The piece also goes on to highlight how Wenger looks like the pressure is really getting to him, describing his bloodshot eyes and weight-loss, seemingly oblivious to the pressure the press have been placing him under for the last few months. While I don’t believe that the pressure is all from the press, they have taken great joy in stoking the fires any chance they can get and cranking up the pressure at any given opportunity and then they question his grip on reality.

Have they ever read some of their own reports?