Wednesday 8 March 2017

Theo Walcott: Arsenal players must take heat off manager Arsene Wenger



Theo Walcott has told the London Evening Standard it is up to Arsenal's players to take the pressure off manager Arsene Wenger.

Arsenal lost 5-1 at home to Bayern Munich on Tuesday to go out of the Champions League 10-2 on aggregate, increasing calls for Wenger to step down at the end of the season.

The result added to the turmoil surrounding the club after Saturday's loss at Liverpool, when Wenger dropped Alexis Sanchez after an alleged training ground row.

Walcott said: "The players are like everybody else -- we don't really know what's going on. We just want to try to focus on the football.
"The manager is focused on us. You can see how passionate he is with us from the way he talks to us in the meetings.

"He will take this on himself, but us players need to look at ourselves. The manager has been taking a lot of flak in recent weeks and us players have been accepting it, but we can't.

"We need to take the pressure off the manager, and that will happen by performances."

He added: "Who knows what the manager will do?"

Former Arsenal star Robert Pires, who still trains regularly with the first team, told beIN SPORTS that Sanchez had left a training session last week after "a bad tackle" and later had a dressing room argument with Laurent Koscielny and other senior players.

But Walcott played down the incident and said the squad had to move on.

"Things get taken out of proportion, we all know this," he said. "There are certain things that happen at training grounds. I'm sure it happens at every other training ground most of the time, really.

"You don't see it often at Arsenal. Things have happened. They need to stay in the dressing room and the players and staff need to sort it out.

"We are in it together here. We can't be fighting each other."

Walcott also told the official Arsenal website that he felt the team should have focused on "damage limitation" towards the end of the Bayern defeat.

They conceded five goals after Laurent Koscielny had been sent off early in the second half in the incident that led to the penalty from which Bayern levelled.

"We wanted to just show passion and commitment -- that hasn't been there in recent weeks, to be honest -- and we did," Walcott added.

"We gave it our all, but we went down to 10 men and it completely changed the whole pattern of the game.

"We should have been smart and just [opted for] damage limitation really. It's just a big shame. People will be saying that we don't care and stuff like this, but obviously we do care.

"There's loads of players who are very hurt in the dressing room."

Arsenal now have only have the FA Cup and a top-four finish to play for, a situation familiar to supporters growing increasingly frustrated with Wenger.

They play non-league Lincoln City in the FA Cup quarterfinals on Saturday, and Walcott said: "It's a good opportunity to go to Wembley and we need to take it.

"It's going to show if we're ready for the fight towards the end of the season. Trust me -- we are."

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