Wenger blasts ‘unacceptable’ display
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger described his side’s performance in the 4-0 loss at Liverpool as “not acceptable” and admitted they had been an “easy opponent” for the Reds.
The Gunners were swept aside at Anfield as Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah and sub Daniel Sturridge all scored.
Asked about what had gone wrong for his side, Wenger said: “Everything.
“From the first to the last minute we were not at the level requested for such a game – not physically, not technically, not mentally were we at the level, and we were punished.
“That’s basically it. You can analyse the chances we gave away. But I just think overall the performance was not at the requested level.”
Wenger added: “I believe in our first two games (43 win over Leicester and a 1-0 loss at Stoke) we looked quite good – our performances were good. But the performance (yesterday) was not acceptable. We were an easy opponent for Liverpool.” Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp felt his side’s performance was perfect. He said: “We played an outstanding game against Hoffenheim and we did the next step (yesterday). “We need to learn we can do things like this every three or four days, otherwise we will have a problem. We wanted to show it today and be spot on from the first second.
“We wanted to show our desire, our greed, our ambitions against a very strong side. The performance was perfect.”
Ex-Sunderland keeper Simon Mignolet – still Klopp’s “clear No 1” – was surprisingly left out of the matchday squad, with Loris Karius starting.