We kick off at Southampton on Sunday roughly 62 hours after the final whistle was blown against BATE Borisov.
Our December schedule is pretty packed - Thursday’s win was the second of nine matches we’ll play over the course of the month.
What does Arsène Wenger make of that?
on kicking off at midday against Southampton…
Yes, but we had that last week. I have nothing against the fact that we have to do that, as long as our opponents have the same recovery days. That was not the case last week and will not be the case again. Between three days and five days is a big gap on the recovery side. If we have to play every day I don’t mind as long as our opponents do as well.
on if he’s spoken to the Premier League…
No, but I think there is a job there to respect the fairness of the competition. If you look at it, I think many teams don’t fight on an equal front on the recovery side.
on if he feels a disadvantage…
What I would like is that the teams who have tight schedules are faced with the same problems. I don’t mind, I can understand what we have to play all the games, you just want to play teams with the same problems as you.
on if he has to pick team up given performance v Man United…
It was a difficult defeat to take. In football when you should win the game, you want to take the points. All the numbers went for us and the result went against us. That is always difficult to accept but we have to go into the next game and respond straightaway again.
on refusing to rule out the title…
I just said that at the moment we have different worries than the title. After such disappointment, you have to think about winning the next game. We are too far from the title at the moment to speak about the title. It’s not realistic. Let’s try to win our next game and over a longer distance see if we can come back.
on if anyone can stop Man City…
Shakhtar Donetsk! Man United have an opportunity on Sunday.
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