Arsenal Honest About Arrogance

Filed in archive Premiership 2006/7 on October 31, 2006

Arsene Wenger has admitted his Arsenal team were a little cocky going into their Champions League defeat at CSKA Moscow.

"I was very positive going to Moscow, but as a team, we were too confident of taking the points," Wenger told The Sun. "We were warned by Porto that CSKA were a difficult side to beat. But we only came into the game after we had gone a goal down."

"Before that, we were not giving 100 percent in every tackle, we were not fighting for the ball enough. It was an arrogant way of not being urgent."

"It was as though we were thinking, 'Don't worry, we will do it'."

It's really refreshing for a manager to admit his team underestimated the opposition. Too often bosses and players say all the right things about "no easy games" and "we won't be taking them lightly" but then still waltz in expecting an easy result.