Source: PA
Wenger: We need to show winning mentality
Manager Arsene Wenger has challenged his young Arsenal side to show they are winners every time they step out onto the pitch.
Captain Cesc Fabregas, who will miss the Barclays Premier League clash against Birmingham at Emirates Stadium with a hamstring problem, expressed his concerns in a Spanish radio interview of the need for his team-mates' "wealth of quality" to be translated into a "winning mentality" and deliver some long-overdue silverware.
Arsenal suffered successive league defeats before the international break, losing at home 3-2 to West Brom and then going down 2-0 at Chelsea to leave them some seven points behind the leaders, only just clinging on to fourth place.
Wenger feels once that illusive first trophy comes, the last being the FA Cup in 2005, then more will follow.
"It can be misinterpreted. I think everybody has a great desire to win but you get a winning mentality as well when you have won," Wenger said when asked to respond to his captain's outspoken comments. "What is at stake for us is not the desire to win but to make history and to win trophies.
"As long as you have not won you are not completely certain that you can do it - but that does not mean that you lack the desire to win. This team has a great desire to win but you have to show it week in week out. This life, at the top level today, in the best league in the world is to turn up every single game at full cylinders."
