By Sam Bisby
4 Mar 2011 14:42:00
Arsene Wenger, Arsenal
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Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger believes that his team’s bitter defeat in the League Cup final to Birmingham City is behind them and they will remain hungry for success for the rest of the season.
The Frenchman’s players shook off the crushing blow in midweek by defeating Leyton Orient 5-0 in the FA Cup, keeping up hopes of ending a six-year wait for a trophy.
Wenger insists that he and his team have learned the hard way of how to cope with such highs and lows within such a small scale of time and that the players are still striving for silverware.
The 61-year-old told reporters on Friday: “I have learned a lot, because every game teaches you new things about your team, and I feel in the last nine days we have gone through highs and lows and what makes a life of a team and a life of the player is how you resist to negative emotions and keep your attitude aligned with your goals.
“You could see on Wednesday night this team is mentally very strong and hungry for success and we look forward and we want to become stronger and stronger. How the team responded to the disappointment on Sunday is remarkable.”
The former Monaco boss is aware that some of his players will have taken the defeat to Alex McCleish’s Birmingham side harder than others, namely goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny and defender Laurent Koscielny, who were very much to blame for the Midlands club’s winner just before full-time.
“[There were] some individuals of course who were a bit more down,” Wenger added. “But overall, not tremendously because we have so many high targets in front of us.
“This team, is for me, top quality and is hungry for success, and we promised ourselves to give absolutely everything until the end of the season and that’s what we want to do and that’s what we will do.
“We had three days later a game and we won it 5-0, and it looked to me that we played the Carling Cup final six months ago, because we are just focused on tomorrow’s game.”
Meanwhile, former Arsenal defender Kolo Toure has found himself in the spotlight for the wrong reasons as the Ivorian stopper has been suspended following a failed drugs test.
Wenger has expressed his surprise at the news and defended the player, claiming he had made an honest, if embarrassing, mistake.
He said: “It is a complete surprise, because I had Kolo Toure here for years. He is a boy who has a clean life, very honest living, always at home, family man, and I do not suspect him at all to have taken drugs to enhance his performances.
“I just think it’s a mistake – he wants to control his weight a little bit because that’s where he has some problems, and he took the product of his wife. Never trust your wife with these kinds of things!
“I think it’s a mistake. He was not cautious enough. I don’t think there is a desire there to do something wrong and to hide it.”