Arsenal’s players held a crisis meeting called by Per Mertesacker, Petr Cech, Mikel Arteta and Tomas Rosicky before their FA Cup victory at Hull City on Tuesday night, in a bid to stave off the dire run of form that is threatening their season.
Before the 4-0 win against Hull in the fifth-round replay at the KC Stadium, Arsène Wenger’s team had won only once in six games, a sequence stretching back to the defeat of Leicester City on Valentine’s Day.
It left the Gunners eight points behind the leaders, Leicester, and facing a 2-0 deficit to Barcelona ahead of the Champions League last-16 second leg at the Camp Nou next week.
Theo Walcott, who scored twice against Hull, along with Olivier Giroud, revealed that a core of senior players decided they should try to thrash out their problems ahead of the game.
“We are not going to lie,” he said. “We know as a unit it has been tough and we all had a good chat among us behind closed doors, without even any of the coaches or the manager knowing about anything and I think it is important that as a team we have got it in us. We just have to produce it more often.”
Walcott pointed to the 2-2 draw at Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday, in which Arsenal fell 2-1 behind to Mauricio Pochettino’s side having gone down to 10 men following the sending off of Francis Coquelin on 55 minutes. Alexis Sánchez’s 76th-minute equaliser secured a point at White Hart Lane and Walcott said: “You had a sense of the Tottenham game especially, when you go down to 10 men in a big game like that, the belief and the character was there."
“The never-give-up spirit was there as well. In the derby matches, they could be the matches that turn your season and we may have turned the corner maybe.”
Walcott outlined how the meeting was called. “We have quite a lot of experienced players in the dressing room,” the 26-year-old said. “It came from Cech, Mikel, Per and Tomas. We have four good old heads there. I’d like to keep what was said among ourselves but it was very important. We have had a reaction from it anyway.”
He said of Wenger: “He probably knows about it anyway – he’s got ears everywhere at the club. The manager respects the players’ privacy and what’s happening personally among us all. It was a meeting to express how everyone was feeling basically and it worked.”
Arsenal now host Watford in the sixth-round tie at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday. Wenger could be without Aaron Ramsey, who sustained a thigh problem against Hull, having come on for Mertesacker. While the latter’s head injury may not rule him out of Sunday, Wenger will await tests on Gabriel Paulista’s hamstring problem after he was also forced off during the match. Nacho Monreal, who replaced the Brazilian, was seen limping after the game and is a further doubt.
Walcott said: “The pitch was quite heavy but the injuries are probably the disappointing thing coming out of the game. But we can’t speculate until we know what the damage is. Injuries come in the game and that is one of those things."
“The most important thing was just a clean sheet. We have been conceding too many goals cheaply as a unit. We haven’t been scoring enough. It was a confidence boost to everyone that it was good.”
Arsenal have won the trophy for the past two seasons and want to become the first club to claim a hat-trick of triumphs since Blackburn Rovers, who achieved the feat between 1884 and 1886.
Walcott said: “We want to stay in this competition because it is massive for us. We want to make those history books and try and push on to Wembley and do it on the third occasion but we have got a big test against Watford first. Obviously we are looking too far ahead and the players don’t really like to do that."
But as you get closer and closer, there is a sense of belief that we can do it and create history which would be a great achievement for everyone. But we all know what we want this year and we would swap it in a heartbeat without a doubt.
“The competition has been pretty good for us. People say we have had some kind draws but you can see in the cup competitions that anyone can beat anyone. You saw the first game against Hull and how they played against us (in a goalless draw). It was there for the taking, to be honest, but luckily it paid off in the end.”
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