Arsene Wenger insists Arsenal weren't 'rubbish' against Manchester City as he tries to rebuild his players' confidence

Consecutive 3-0 defeats against City has left Wenger and his side under serious scrutiny as they face up to the prospect of missing out on the top four once again

Arsene Wenger has spoken of his need to rebuild his players' confidence after the defeats by Manchester City (Getty)

Arsene Wenger has admitted that the scoreline in Thursday’s Premier League defeat by Manchester City suggests that his side were “rubbish”, but stressed that was not the case and that there are a lot of positives for his Arsenal side to take out of their seventh loss in 2018.

Thursday’s 3-0 defeat mirrored the EFL Cup final loss last Sunday as Arsenal were brushed aside by City for the second time in four days, leaving Arsenal 10 points off the top four and facing a win-or-bust campaign in the Europa League to try and qualify for next season’s Champions League.

The two defeats this week – and general slump this season – has led to the widespread belief that change will come at Arsenal this summer whether Wenger likes it or not, although the Frenchman does have a contract that runs until the end of next season that, if he sees it out, will take his managerial reign at Arsenal to a staggering 23 years.

But rather than talk about his future, Wenger was eager to discuss how he will rebuild the confidence of his players ahead of this Sunday’s trip to Brighton and Hove Albion. With Arsenal 10 points off fourth-placed Tottenham Hotspur and eight points behind Chelsea, the Gunners look destined to finish sixth this season – one place worse off than last season – and will have to put all of their eggs into the Europa League basket in the hope of gaining the Champions league spot on offer for the tournament winners.

“It has taken out confidence as you know, and brought big disappointment and in football – as I said yesterday – you lose confidence very quickly and you regain it very slowly,” Wenger told Sky Sports on Friday morning.

“You have to always show that kind of strength not to give in and in all organisations disappointments come, it’s very (divisive), very split, but our experience has to help us to stay together and focus on the next games.”

Asked how he will restore the confidence, Wenger said: “First of all by analysing in an objective way, for example the game last night was not all negatives, there were a lot of positives in that game. The size of the score, it is always tempting to think it was rubbish but that was not the case, so you have to take a perspective, sit back and look at the whole picture and analyse really where we were poor and where we were strong and persist on the strong points to get rid of the weak points that we showed last night.

“The strong points are that we played at a high intensity, that we were quite good going forward, but we couldn’t take advantage of the chances we created – I think we had the first chance in the game – and so overall I believe we had a very dynamic game and put a lot of effort in, and it was a pacey game with both teams really going for it but they were clinical as they were in the League Cup. They have taken advantage of every weakness that we have shown defensively.”


 Wenger didn't make any substitutions in the 3-0 defeat by City 
 (Getty)

Wenger noticeably didn’t make any substitutions on Thursday, ending the match with the same starting XI that he started with, which given that their next encounter comes in just three days’ time suggests that the Frenchman could make changes to his side for the trip to the Amex Stadium in an attempt to trigger a response from the squad.