Manchester City 2 Arsenal 1: Arsene Wenger urges Gunners to be 'realistic' as nine-point gulf opens to Chelsea

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James Benge18 December 2016

Arsene Wenger has admitted Arsenal must be “realistic” as they attempt to close the widening gulf between them and Chelsea.

Consecutive 2-1 defeats against Everton and Manchester City have left Wenger’s side nine points behind Chelsea, whose 11 win run since their 3-0 loss to the Gunners in September has seen them build a commanding lead at the top of the league.

In what Wenger termed an “absolutely horrible” week that also saw them handed a tough draw against Bayern Munich in the Champions League Arsenal twice threw away one goal leads in the North West to suffer their first league defeats since the opening weekend of the season.

It leaves his side heading into a crucial festive period at their lowest ebb for several months but Wenger urged his side to bounce back immediately on Boxing Day at home to West Brom.

“We have to come back next week and win our game,” Wenger said.

“I think we’ve had an absolutely horrible week and what is worse is that out of two good performances, you get zero points. And out of two leading positions, we lost two games. That of course is very disappointing.

“Before we think about the nine points, we have to come back and be realistic. For a while we have not kept a clean sheet, and if you want to play at the top you have to keep clean sheets.”

Arsenal have not kept a clean sheet in 12 matches in all competitions whilst their back-to-back defeats have coincided with the absence of summer signing Shkodran Mustafi, yet to lose in 17 games with his new club.

But Wenger did not put the defeat down to absent players instead turning his attention to a fixture list that saw Arsenal play five away games in 15 days.

“First of all, we’ve played many games. We’ve played four games away from home out of the last five.

“We had one day less recovery at Everton than everybody else. We played in Basel, we played against Stoke on Saturday, then we played at Everton on Tuesday night. I feel there are plenty of big teams who don’t play in Europe who could have played on Tuesday, and we could have played on Wednesday.

“I think it’s a bit the accumulation of games we’ve played recently, particularly away from home.”

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