Wayne Rooney questioned the scale of Arsenal\u2019s emotions on the pitch after Tuesday\u2019s Champions League semifinal win over Atl\u00e9tico Madrid. Standing at the side of the Emirates pitch and commenting for Amazon Prime Video, he observed: \u201cThey haven\u2019t won it yet,\u201d and added, \u201cI think the celebrations are a little bit too heavy. Celebrate when you win … but no, they deserve it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ars\u00e8ne Wenger offered a contrasting perspective. Wenger, the only Arsenal manager before Arteta to steer the club to a Champions League final, said on beIN Sport: \u201cThey celebrate well tonight which is normal but you want to focus already on the final and the next games,\u201d and defended the players\u2019 reaction: \u201cThe celebration is deserved and happiness is normal\u2014absolutely normal\u2014but the next step is to go to the final and win it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The moment underlined how Arsenal\u2019s progress has rekindled comparisons with the run to the 2006 final. Wenger\u2019s 2006 side reached the Paris showpiece after a defensive sequence that included 10 successive clean sheets, Barcelona breaking that run only in the 76th minute in the final.<\/p>\n
Arteta\u2019s team have shown similar defensive resilience this season. Tuesday\u2019s shutout against Atl\u00e9tico was Arsenal\u2019s ninth clean sheet in 14 Champions League games this term. David Raya has been central to that record, facing an average of less than three shots on target per game in European competition this term, a mark described as comfortably the best on the continent. Atl\u00e9tico managed to force the Gunners\u2019 goalkeeper into two saves before their European campaign faltered.<\/p>\n
The exchange between Rooney and Wenger also highlighted contrasting touchline styles. Wenger was not a very demonstrative manager on Arsenal\u2019s touchline, unlike Arteta, yet even the reserved Frenchman accepted the players\u2019 celebration while pointing to the need for focus on the final and the matches that follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wenger rebukes Rooney’s critique after Arsenal’s Champions League semi; focus shifts to final ahead<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13655,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1303],"tags":[1162,1644],"class_list":["post-13656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-arsenal-news","tag-analytics","tag-arsene-wenger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}