Reacting to protests from the Tottenham fans before and after the game against Manchester United on Sunday, Arsene Wenger has made a curious claim about the Lilywhites and the Red Devils.
Much needed win for Spurs but protests dominate headlines
No doubt Spurs desperately needed the three points against Manchester United in order to lift the doom and gloom that had descended on the club and to ensure that the speculation over Ange Postecoglou‘s future subsides, at least for the time being.
However, the big takeaway from Sunday was not what happened on the pitch, but what happened off it.
Thousands of Spurs fans protesters outside the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium ahead of kick-off, expressing their displeasure at the way ENIC and Daniel Levy have run the club while calling for them to leave.
Arsene Wenger claims rebuild needed at Tottenham
The protests have had the desired effect as they have put Levy and the owners under the spotlight, with various influential media figures now discussing the failure of the club’s hierarchy to deliver silverware despite their commercial success.
Wenger believes that Tottenham and Man Utd are in the exact same boat, with the leadership of both clubs unable to translate their financial muscle into footballing success.
The former Arsenal manager suggested that both clubs need to rebuild their squad in order to catch up to the other big sides in the division.
When asked about the protests from Spurs fans, Wenger told beIN SPORTS: “The fans are not happy because today it’s a team with 14 who plays against a team with 15.
“You will not find many happy fans on both sides, so when you say it’s a very important game, I would say for the table it’s not an important game because they are out of everything.
“It’s an important game like you say for pride, and to try and find some peace with your fans because both teams cost over a billion pounds.
“So you would say both have basically the same problem, to find good players to rebuild their team. The whole team is to be rebuilt at Tottenham and at Man United as well and that will not be easy for both sides.”
Tottenham are much better placed than Man Utd
When you go through the Tottenham squad and the Man Utd squad, there is clear daylight between the two in terms of quality, even though there is not much to separate them in the table.
This is a point that was made by Gary Neville in his own weekly podcast for Sky Sports, where he suggested that perhaps only Bruno Fernandes would get into Tottenham’s strongest eleven if everyone was fit.
Even in terms of patterns of play, it was clear on Sunday that the Spurs players had much better role clarity than their United counterparts.
Overall, there is no doubt that the United squad needs far more surgery than the Tottenham team, who only need to put the finishing touches to ensure all bases are covered.