Robin van Persie has expressed his “frustration” at Arsenal’s inconsistency this season after the club’s campaign took another turn for the worse at Blackburn Rovers.
GettyImagesArsenal have made their worst ever start since the arrival of Arsene Wenger
Arsenal looked on course to make it back-to-back Premier League wins at Ewood Park on Saturday as they led 2-1 at half-time only for Arsene Wenger’s side to capitulate in the second half with struggling Blackburn running out 4-3 winners.
Van Persie has told the club’s official website: “There is lots of time, but at some point you need to pick yourself up and prove what you are capable of. We are not doing that at the moment and are not consistent enough. It just frustrates me, and it is happening too often.
“Every time we start positively we just keep making the same mistakes and that is surprising. Even before the game on Saturday I said to the boys, ‘Today is a big, big day’. We have to get back-to-back wins, and we just cannot do that at the moment.
“That is our aim for the next couple of games, we have to win them after each other. We just need a couple of good weeks in the Premier League where we get a lot of points, and hopefully we can start next week against Bolton.”
Arsenal are next in action on Tuesday versus Shrewsbury in the Carling Cup when Wenger is expected to give some of his youngsters a chance to gain experience. One of those players could be Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who signed from Southampton in the summer.
Of Oxlade-Chamberlain, who has been likened to former Southampton forward Theo Walcott, Wenger said: “They are quite similar types of players but Walcott is a bit more a striker and Oxlade-Chamberlain is more a midfielder.
“He [Oxlade-Chamberlain] likes more to be in the build-up of things and Walcott is more a guy who makes intelligent runs. So they are not that similar as players but they have some similarities physically already. They look the same size, the same type of player.
“But I believe that Oxlade-Chamberlain could be a central midfielder one day and Walcott a central striker one day. That shows the difference between the two players. I don’t know [if the comparisons are fair] but you can’t stop that.”
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