When you are roaming around the top of league leaderboard, the thing that worries you is not one win in Capital One but injuries that could land you in trouble should any of your star players encounters something painful. Last Arsenal Capital One Cup showdown against Sheffield Wednesday was one such game that caused sideline of two Gunners players: Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo Walcott for respective injuries. Even though Emirate side lost the game by 3-0 netted by Ross Wallace, Lucas Joao, and Sam Hutchinson, yet this is not the worrying point for the Frenchman as he has had a rather inexperienced lineup at Hillsborough, however, he is more concerned about the injuries to both the starlets who have been in terrific form this league season. Tuesday game saw Oxlade-Chamberlain ousted for his hamstring problem; his substitute Theo Walcott also left the ground within ten minutes for a calf problem. Both the injuries are apparently not so big, yet detail scans can only tell how severe they have been through which would take another 48 hours to diagnose.
Talking about the injuries and how devastating they can be for Arsenal in their next Champions league showdown this Saturday at Bayern, 66-year-old said, “The injuries are two muscular injuries and we have to make the scan and wait 48 hours to see how bad the damage is. It was a bad night at the office for us because we lost the two players and after that we were not good enough. I am concerned because we have a big game on Saturday, and the Champions League at Bayern coming up and we are short. To lose two players is damaging to us, and two offensive players.”
Talking about pressure of performing well in several titles simultaneously, Wenger accepted the limitations of having a limited number of in-form players in the side and added, “I have to manage the workload of the players at the moment. I still think I brought too many experienced players here because we lost two players, and once I lost two players I had Gabriel and Monreal on the bench. I didn’t bring them on because I couldn’t afford to lose any more players. I am very happy about the victory, I think we deserved it. Everything belongs to the players, they were fantastic, we put a plan together and they did it 100 percent.
“I am very happy about the players and for the club, it is an important victory for the club. It was a full stadium, with a new generation of fans. We deserved what we got.”