Saturday, August 17, 2013

Wenger defends Arsenal transfer policy after Aston Villa defeat



The Frenchman insists the blame for his side's loss at the Emirates Stadium cannot be directed at a lack of signings this summer

Arsene Wenger insists Arsenal's lack of signings in the transfer market were not to blame for Saturday's 3-1 defeat to Aston Villa.

Arsenal have already failed in moves for Gonzalo Higuain, who moved to Napoli in July, and Luiz Gustavo, who secured a switch from Bayern Munich to Wolfsburg earlier this week. The club also look set to lose out on Luis Suarez as Liverpool continue to reiterate their no-sale stance when asked about the striker.

So far, Wenger has managed to

sign 20-year-old forward Yaya Sanogo on a free transfer from Auxerre, but the Arsenal boss is adamant that his side's season-opening defeat to Villa cannot be blamed on the failure to bolster his squad over the summer.

"Could we have won the game with the players who were on the pitch today? That for me is the real question and I say yes," Wenger told the club's official website.

"If we do not spend money it's because we don't find the players. I'm not the only one to work on that, we are a team who works on that and we are ready to buy the players if we find that the players are good enough for us.

"We want our fans to be happy and when you don't achieve that you feel absolutely sorry and really disappointed. My job is to make the fans happy but we haven't lost the game because of [not signing players].

"We are on the market, everybody knows that we want to buy players but until we buy players we have to win football games. It's not an excuse not to have bought players to lose the game today.

"People always say 'buy players, buy players, buy players' when you tell them 'tell me who' it becomes much more problematic. We take our work  seriously and believe me we analyse every single player in the world.

"We work 24 hours a day for that and when you make a decision we take it seriously. We are not what people try to think we do not want to spend, we want, we are ready to buy players."

The Frenchman also lamented his growing injury list, with Bacary Sagna, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Kieran Gibbs all picking up knocks during the game.

Arsenal now face a trip to Turkey on Wednesday where they will face Fenerbahce in the first leg of their Champions League play-off tie.

"Not only do we lose a game we have many injuries. It's unbelievable how many people are on the treatment table and we have to recover some players for Wednesday night," he added. 

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