Wenger – We’re Ready For Liverpool

Manager Arsene Wenger has said he expects Arsenal to be ‘straight back on it’ when we face Liverpool now the international break is behind us.

Speaking to the Official Site ahead of the game, Wenger said he knew it was important that we continued with the momentum we had ahead of the international break as we had six wins on the spin and he wants us to continue that after our ‘lighter’ fortnight.

‘It`s a big game and an opportunity for us to continue our run, which is what we want to do. We are on a strong run and we just want to focus on winning our games, winning the next one. Liverpool is a big opponent but we play at the Emirates and we want to do it. You know after the international break it’s always important that you come back and straight away you are on it.’

Taking all three points this weekend would mean we open a nine point gap over Liverpool, but again – despite being asked – Wenger was more coy when it came to the season run in and what Arsenal could potentially achieve with the games that remain.

‘I’m not too much in mathematics now. We do that after the game. What is important is just for us to win the game and produce the performance. At the moment, I just want to make sure we have a quality performance and have a continuity of what we produced recently.’

In terms of team news for the match, Wenger confirmed that Mikel Arteta, Jack Wilshere, Mathieu Debuchy and Abou Diaby all returned to training and the pitch in the Brentford friendly on Tuesday and they had a good session and came through it feeling well, but obviously fitness wise they are off the pace of the others – but are back in contention now.

‘They were all involved and it went well. They’ve no problem after that coming out of the game. They’ve been out for a long time but I was quite surprised by how fit they looked and the quality of their performance – it was good.’

If he does involve any of them it’s likely that Arteta would be the one not rushed just yet, but he admits for Wilshere, Diaby and Debuchy he hasn’t made his mind up yet, but being back they will obviously play their parts in the coming weeks.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain remains out though and Danny Welbeck has come back from international duty with a knock to his knee, but he’s 50/50 at the moment.

In a different interview the gaffer also talked about mental preparation for a game, and says that for the squad that is always the same and depends on the player concerned and he tries to set the tone.

‘Everybody is different and approaches a matchday differently, but I always try to be confident. I`m always confident that my team will do well and I want to show that. But you never know exactly the mental energy that will be in the team during the game, nor the physical energy that will be in everybody that day. Why? Because we are all human beings and don`t wake up every day in exactly the same state.’