Arsene Wenger believes caution is a common factor in Arsenal's poor results when they play on Saturday lunchtimes.
The Gunners have come unstuck at Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea in early kick-offs this season and those three defeats have severely dented their title hopes.
Wenger thinks Arsenal were much more competitive at the Etihad than they were at Anfield or Stamford Bridge but he can see a trend in his team's approach.
"We had chances [at Man City], we had plenty of opportunities there to score"
"The only common thing I see is that maybe we were a bit too cautious or a bit on the back foot," said Wenger.
"The only other thing is that they were three games at 12.45pm. Do we have to change our preparation for a game at that time? I don’t think we do anything wrong because we have played some other games at 12.45pm and we did very well. Maybe it was a psychological factor, I don’t know."
Arsenal's 6-3 defeat at Man City in December came in mitigating circumstances. Wenger's team had little recovery time after their midweek trip to Napoli and ran out of steam in the final stages after causing City's defence plenty of problems.
"We had chances, we had plenty of opportunities there to score," said Wenger. "We conceded three goals in the last 20 minutes when we were down to 10 men after we had played in Naples three days before.
"There are plenty of positives in that game to convince us that we can beat City. We conceded goals, so we have to defend better than we did on the day."
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