Wenger: PL should do more to protect club in Europe

Arsène Wenger has suggested this week’s collective English failure in Europe was caused by the intensity of the Premier League and the lack of help from the governing body.


“I don’t have a completely rational explanation for all that,” said the Arsenal manager following the midweek Champions League defeats by his team and Manchester City and the Europa League exits of Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur. “It may be due to how very hard the English league is. The teams expend too much energy in matches and there is no protection in terms of preparing for matches and they pay for that in European competition against teams who are better protected in their domestic leagues and can prepare with less demands in their matches. For us, there is no difference physically between a European match and a domestic one.”

Unlike many European leagues, the Premier League does not grant clubs the flexibility to move fixtures to help prepare for, or recover from, European exertions, other than allowing teams who contest Europa League ties on Thursdays to play their next league match – or in Tottenham’s present case, the Capital One Cup final – the following Sunday.

Monaco, who beat Arsenal at the Emirates on Wednesday, had not played a domestic match since the previous Friday night’s trip to Nice, whereas Arsenal played at Crystal Palace on Saturday. Arsenal do not play again until they meet Everton on Sunday, so that schedule is hardly the most strenuous a team could face, but Wenger was speaking more generally. He could have referred to Liverpool, who played at Southampton last Sunday, then lost in a penalty shoot-out to Besiktas in Istanbul on Thursday night and must face Manchester City in an early kick-off on Sunday.

Fourteen of the 20 Premier League clubs would have to vote in favour of change if the clubs competing in Europe were to be allowed to move matches. It is hard to see why the majority would deem it to be in their interests to help the elite clubs.

While authorities in Portugal, Germany and Italy have all allowed their clubs to switch matches to increase their readiness for international duels, it is still common for European teams to experience schedules at least as difficult as the ones endured by English teams this week. Last October Real Madrid thrashed Liverpool at Anfield just days before the clásico against Barcelona, who were in Champions League action against Ajax just prior to that showdown. The next clash between Spain’s two biggest clubs will take place three days after the second leg of Barcelona’s Champions League match with Manchester City. In Italy, Fiorentina and Internazionale meet each other after eliminating British clubs from the Europa League on Thursday night.

Wenger rejected the suggestion that this week’s European reverses show that the Premier League is overrated. “I don’t think so,” he said. “We must not base judgment of the value of the Premier League on one round of matches in Europe. It’s the audiences that decide. The spectacular quality of matches is behind the success of the Premier League.”

The Arsenal manager did not pretend that his own’s team midweek humbling was entirely down to Monaco having an extra day to prepare. He repeated his criticisms of his players. “I think we were too impatient” he said. “We lost our game slowly during the game because we were shocked that we were 1-0 down after we rushed our game. We lost our discipline and everybody became too individual.” However, Wenger warned against discounting his team’s ability to overturn their 3-1 deficit from the first leg when they travel to Monaco. “We are still in the Champions league – don’t rule us out too quickly.”

For now, Wenger says he wants his players to re-assert their quality by beating Everton, the one Premier League team definitely into the next round of European competition. “We have to respond to that disappointment in a strong way on Sunday afternoon, that’s all we can do. We are back in the top three in the Premier League, we have an opportunity to stabilise this position and we want to take it.”


By Paul Doyle, Guardian