“I think it’s not a pitch,” said Wenger. “When you build a stadium with that kind of money and you still have no pitch, it’s laughable. The quality of the pitch is a disgrace.”
It’s fairly normal for the losing team to find an excuse. When it’s Arsene Wenger, you take it for granted he will find something to blame the result on. However, he has a point about the pitch. Chelsea had to play on the same pitch, so it’s not a valid enough excuse for losing, but the pitch did look a mess.
Before the game the groundsman had been instructed by the press not to speak to Setanta representatives about the standard of the pitch. The FA know there’s a problem, they’ve dragged two teams down from the North-West for a Sunday afternoon kick-off, and the pitch is a fucking state.
We know all about bad pitches, we’ve had a hard time with ours, but we fixed it. What kind of joke is it that they’ve spent £800 million on a ground which sees a few football games a year, yet they still can’t get the pitch right for those few occasions??
If the pitch was bad yesterday, can you imagine the state it’s going to be in now? I’m talking about this as an pre-emptive excuse for losing, rather voicing frustration that we won’t (Everton included) be able to play as well as we want to.
Another grumble, whilst I’m at it, did you see how many empty seats there were at Wembley yesterday? The fans were back in their seats for the restart but the corporate seats with the optimum view were empty for a good ten minutes of the second half. As if any more proof was needed that 40,000 seats were being given by the FA to a load of people who couldn’t care less about the match.
Ok, roll on 4pm!
Man Utd News 24/7
the 1st option should have been:
Very- the FA are cunts
Wenger is right.Sorry but if i was British and that stadium,after all the delays and the increased costs, turned out like this then i would really question my Government about where their head has been for the past 10 years.ANother question i have is why can’t they change it.Is it impossible?It’s been like this since the Cup Final of 07.I remember the press blaming the teams,but you can’t expect teams with 60 games on their backs to perform fast and fluent football on that.
its shocking the f.a. i taught the fai where bad over here
mayve they are as bad as each other
The Greek football federation is the worst in the world, if we are going down that road…
this comes from this romantic notion that the Wembely pitch has to be energy sapping so that it equals out the difference between good football playing sides and the poorer sides.
I find it crazy that the present England side is trying to play football the right way, with good passers in the middle of the park, less of the long balls, a pacy game but the pitch given to them by the FA prevents that.
If the FA wants a good FA Cup final then they have to sort this pitch out, as well as all the other problems at Wembely, reduce the corporate seats, reduce the games played there, if 2 northern teams play in the same game, have that game on the Sat not the Sun!
but then when have the FA give a single thought about the supporters of the game they supposedly run.
This is what you say;
“It’s fairly normal for the losing team to find an excuse. When it’s Arsene Wenger, you take it for granted he will find something to blame the result on. However, he has a point about the pitch. Chelsea had to play on the same pitch, so it’s not a valid enough excuse for losing, but the pitch did look a mess.”
This is what AW said;
“I believe for Chelsea it was tough as well. It is not a pitch you should have in a stadium that cost this amount of money. It is laughable. The quality of the pitch is a disaster.”
It seems that AW didn’t blame losing the game on the pitch, although one will be tempted to. If you are trying to play carpet football like your team wants to and the other team plays long balls like Drogba’s goal, then you’re likely to be more hampered than them.
Arsenal fan
The pitch makes a difference depending on your style of play.We will find that out ourselves today.
It is an outrage as simple as. How many injuries will reoccur after playing on that ploughed field. Hate the place. Seats about 100 yards away from pitch. Just another “modern” stadium. awful. If I were managers of the teams involved especially us and Everton I would just point blank refuse to play down there. Boycott it altogether and see what those cunts at the fa have to say.
King Eric, agreed. We really should’ve boycotted it and taken the FA on for once.
The pitch was appalling yesterday. Today? We’ll have to be unbelievably lucky to avoid injuries on that pitch. Shocking!
That’s why i’ve already said that it will be good for Rooney not to play today.
“Seats about 100 yards away from pitch” – if we go past Arsenal we will play in Stadio Olimpico where i think there is the same distance. )
yeah can I just say I heard wenger say something along the lines of, ‘it’s not an excuse for losing the match because it hampered both teams’ in his setanta interview…that’s pretty categorical, the words ‘it’s not an excuse for losing’ were definitely said
Wembley is a terrible place. The pitch is a disgrace and it tires out the players.
okay maybe terrible is abit harsh its mordern and all that but they took away the soul of the stadium its now just a coperate stadium like the emirates and the cost is unbelievable.
what also annoys me is they have it darrrn sarrrf.
See peoples, we didn’t had to waite too long to see ‘THE TWINS’ playing together for utd first team..and what a match to make the ‘twin’ debute, FA CUP semi final in a year in which we could make history by becoming the first club to win Quintuple..lets first hope the team selection beat the blues…
Wembley’s present state is like a bad apple i.e. nice on the outside but rotten on the inside/at the core!. Besides club managers, other national team managers have also made similar complaints about the pitch!
The pitch was horrible during the NFL game last year and looked like it had been recently flooded on Sunday… it can’t rain that much in London, or does it?
Top marks on this. You pre empted that this disgrace of a pitch would fuck your game too. I hate you lot but you play top football and this filthy pitch fucked you too.
A bog like that suits cloggers like Chelsea and Everton because they were raised in shit.
Wenger and Taggart both said that its no excuse for losing a game but its a dogshit pitch. And it is.