Look out Premier League, here comes Swansea City! Arsene Wenger saw his side stunned, in a 3-1 loss at the Liberty Stadium tonight that left the Arsenal boss irate with his team. In dead last place much of the season, the Swans have now achieved back to back wins over big six clubs (Liverpool was the other). The win took Swansea out of the relegation zone for the first time since early November.
For Arsenal, well, the sentiment surrounding the club is best captured with the cartoon graphic below via Bleacher Report:
GIROUD ???? pic.twitter.com/O9XMC8xA4O
— Salama Zalhata Jabir (@EceJay) January 31, 2018
“We have no rational explanation for the way we gave the goal away straight away,” Wenger said of the first Swansea goal, scored by Sam Clucas, which erased the Gunners’ early lead.
“I was angry because there was no need to let the ball go out in the throw in,” the Frenchman opined on the home side’s second goal, which would prove to be the game winner.
“When you have a throw in for you and you are nine vs. 10 on the pitch, why should we put a handicap like that on our own team? We can play the ball and attack straight away.”
“I felt defensively we were very poor and made big mistakes,”
While Wenger was fuming about his side’s catastrophic performance, and understandably so, Swansea City Manager Carlos Carvalhal was feeling emotions that were in stark contrast.
Carvalhal, who has earned 10 points for the Welsh club in his five league games on the job, gave an extremely colorful (accurate too) metaphor to explain the journey his side is currently on.
“A team that was almost death (makes oxygen-gasping noise) almost ready to go to the cemetery,” he said.
“But I said in our analogy but we were not in intensive care but we were in the hospital. Maybe now we are near to go out of hospital. We still have our problems. The doctor still has to look after us. We are not far away to be out of hospital. This is something very good to us.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune corporation blogging community Chicago Now.
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