We have to be strong at home – Wenger

Arsenal’s manager, Arsene Wenger, believes excellent performances at the Emirates Stadium would be key to him team’s success this season. Arsenal opened the season with a 2-0 home loss to West Ham United in a match that saw summer signing Petr Cech gifting the opponents cheap goals.

“It’s important because we know a successful season is linked with our home strength. This is an opportunity to show it.”

“The fans deserve good home and away performances. Our job is to make people who love this club happy. You feel guilty when you don’t,” Wenger said at a pre-match conference on Friday.

“If you want to have a successful season you want to be strong at home,” Wenger said. “Normally we are strong at home. This is an opportunity to show that.

“We missed our first game and we had to look at ourselves, and we responded very well. Now we need to come back to our usual strength that we have at home.

“Your confidence is linked with your last result and at Crystal Palace we responded well. You could see that we were a bit edgy at times but we responded in a very strong way. From that we should have enough confidence to go into the game positively against Liverpool.

“This is a very important game where the result will of course be vital. It’s not a result that will decide [our title chances] but in our heads we know it’s very important.

The manager said he would not let his decision to sign new players be influenced by opinions in the media and those of the cub’s fans. He said the club’s philosophy of developing players of its own was working

“Even if I look everywhere and listen to everybody at the end of the day I have to make the decisions,” he said.

“If I just listen to people’s opinion, many players who have signed here starting with Vieira, Anelka and Henry would never have signed.

“It is difficult because there’s more money in football, more clubs with big resources, and less players available. The funds are there more than the players who could strengthen the squad. That is a big problem.”

“We want to develop players as well rather than over-thinking whether to buy,” he said.

“I’m not against buying when it is a plus for your team. If it’s just to buy a player at the level of the players that you have to make people happy, I’m not ready for that.”