Theo Walcott says Arsenal's players have a duty to battle to save
Arsene Wenger's job and also warned: "We can't be fighting each other." More stories after the cut...
Arsenal were beaten 5-1 at home by Bayern Munich in the Champions
League last-16 on Tuesday, sealing a 10-2 aggregate defeat and bringing a
sorry curtain down on another disappointing European campaign.
The result followed Saturday's 3-1 Premier League loss at Liverpool -
a match that saw top scorer Alexis Sanchez sit out the first half amid
reports of a training-ground bust-up.
Wenger has arguably never been closer to the Arsenal exit door during
his two decades at the club and, with pressure mounting on the
Frenchman to walk away, Walcott has issued a rallying cry to his
team-mates.
"The players are like everybody else - we don't really know what's
going on," he told Standard Sport. "We just want to try to focus on the
football.
"The manager is focused on us. You can see how passionate he is with us from the way he talks to us in the meetings.
"He will take this [the Bayern result] on himself but us players need
to look at ourselves. The manager has been taking a lot of flak in
recent weeks and us players have been accepting it, but we can't.
"We need to take the pressure off the manager and that will happen by
performances. Who knows what the manager will do? Players just want to
play football for this club and do well for the manager."
Discussing the reported altercation involving Sanchez, Walcott added:
"Things get taken out of proportion
- we all know this. There are
certain things that happen at training grounds.
"I'm sure it happens at every other training ground, most of the time, really.
"You don't see it often at Arsenal. Things have happened. They need
to stay in the dressing room and the players and staff need to sort it
out.
"We are in it together here. We can't be fighting each other."
Arsenal host non-league Lincoln City in the FA Cup quarter-finals on Saturday.
No comments: