After showing title-winning form at the end of last season when they won 8 out of their last 10 fixtures, Arsenal were presumably ready to challenge for the Premier League title this time around.
However, they were harshly brought back to reality as they crashed to a 3-1 defeat on home soil to a young Aston Villa side, despite taking an early lead via Giroud’s left boot. The French international eased into the box and swept home Oxlade-Chamberlain’s cross from the left.
However, things soon turned sour for Wenger as Benteke turned the game on its head after scoring twice from the spot, and Luna added a third after Koscielny had been sent-off in controversial circumstances for two bookable offences.
The fans really vented their frustration and anger on Wenger and his sloppy Arsenal side at the full-time whistle, as no major signings have been made till date even though they have an all new ‘financial firepower’ in the market. In fact, Arsenal’s first eleven was identical to the one that started their last match of the 2012-13 campaign, which really highlights the lack of transfer activity at the club.
Even though they performed admirably at the backend of last season, new signings need to be made in order to inject some freshness into the squad. However, while many of us believe new signings are necessary in order for the Gunners to progress, such claims were refuted by Wenger.
According to Yahoo! Eurosport, after the match against Villa, he said, “My job is to make the fans happy, but we haven’t lost a game because of that (not spending). We take our work seriously and we analyse every player in the world and spend 24 hours a day doing that. We are ready to spend, but until we buy players we have to win football games and it is not an excuse not to win the game today.”
He added, “Could we have won the game with the players we had on the pitch? I say yes. If we don’t spend the money, it is because we don’t find the players. I am not the only one to work on that, we are a team that works on that and we are ready to buy the players if we find the players good enough for us.”