Eduardo fallout:A week after the tackle on Eduardo the Arsenal manager is still angry at the perceived treatment dished out to his player
ARSENE WENGER'S attempt to present a serene front at the end of a "difficult week" slipped towards the realm of paranoia yesterday, as he suggested Arsenal were the victims of refereeing injustice and over-physical tactics.
The manager continues to smart at the events of last Saturday, when Arsenal drew 2-2 at Birmingham City to allow Manchester United to narrow the gap at the top of the table to three points. The afternoon was marred for Wenger by the career-threatening leg break suffered by his striker Eduardo da Silva, from a tackle by Martin Taylor, the dubious last-minute penalty that gave Birmingham the draw and by the bizarre histrionics of his captain, William Gallas.
The France defender reacted furiously to the penalty award, which was given despite Gael Clichy appearing to play the ball in his challenge with Stuart Parnaby. Gallas marched towards the other end of the pitch, kicked an advertising hoarding and staged an apparent sit-in protest at full-time. Wenger said Gallas's behaviour showed that he "really cares about winning".
The tone darkened, though, when Wenger raised the subject of the treatment he feels his players receive. He had said in the prickly heat of the post-match moment that Taylor ought to be "banned for life" for his studs-up tackle on Eduardo and although he retracted the comments after meeting with the Birmingham defender and giving him "the benefit of the doubt", he still clearly harbours concerns.
"I am long enough in the game to know what happens in the dressingrooms before the games and I believe at the moment, it is not the right moment to talk about that but at some stage, when I am not in the job any more, I can talk to you about it," he said.
Alex McLeish, the Birmingham manager, had been concerned that his team had been bullied in their previous two fixtures and he had told them to get at Arsenal from the outset. "I don't know (about that) and I don't want to know," said Wenger, but he could not conceal his anger at how a succession of teams in recent years had, in his view, targeted his players.
"The basic problem in this league is that since three years, we are the team that commits less fouls than any other team, is fouled more than any other team and is punished more than any other team," he said.
"Every four fouls, Arsenal gets a yellow card, every nine fouls some other teams get yellow cards. The numbers are available to everybody, (through) Opta statistics. I should invite you sometimes to come into the dressingroom and look at the legs of (the midfielder) Alex Hleb after a football game, you will be amazed. What is happening is not a surprise to us. How many times have I sat in a press room and heard people say 'They got in your faces today and you didn't find an answer'. What do you think? We tried to play football. The guys who should have this question asked (to them) is not me, it's the opposite manager.
"I just want to say that we try to play football and try to bring the good things out of the game. What I think of football is that it can be fantastic, beautiful and unite the world, and that's the side we try to get out of our game. We try to play football, all of the other things are the responsibility of the other teams. I look at my team, I take responsibility when I have to but you cannot say that Arsene doesn't try to play football and Arsene plays to commit fouls but, at the moment, we have been punished more than anyone else in this game."
Although Arsenal have indeed committed fewer fouls than any other team during the period, Manchester United and Everton players have been fouled more. Meanwhile, Arsenal collect a yellow card every 7.95 fouls, as do Blackburn Rovers, and both clubs are not penalised as regularly as are Chelsea and Bolton Wanderers. As Wenger adopted the mentality of a siege, he cared not to mention the 72 red cards his players had accumulated during his 11 seasons in charge.
In many respects, this was Wenger at his worst - blinkered, persecution complex to the fore, lacking his characteristic smooth argument. "We never play with hate, it is not in our culture at all, we play with desire to win," said Wenger. "We want to deal with the (Eduardo) incident in a serene way - it happened, but why did it happen? It's down to Martin Taylor.
"We have to deal with the fact that we have an injured player and we can only support him. We have one more reason to win the championship since that happened. But we are top of the table. For a team that is falling to bits, we are not doing too badly."
