Embattled Wenger goes from the defiant to the delusional

Arsenal 3 Fulham 3

In fact, Arsene Wenger was not just defensive after his team’s bizarre 3-3 draw with Fulham, but downright defiant — possibly even delusional.

When he was asked whether his team can still feature in any title race, the Arsenal manager kept a poker face. “I feel yes, of course. Yes, why not?”

Many might point to the fact that, after losing a 2-0 lead on Saturday, this is the club’s worst start to any season since 1982-83 and they are already 11 points behind leaders Manchester United after just 11 games.

For his part, Wenger did attempt to at least explain his assertion. He believes Arsenal’s recent drop-off is down to no more than fatigue.

“I think we had three difficult games this week, especially the first two. We had to recover from Man United, then we gave it all at Schalke. Today we had a good game overall for a team that has played Champions League on Tuesday but we were maybe caught a bit on a lack of complete urgency when 2-0 up.

“Instead of becoming more aggressive, we became a bit easier and instead of continuing to push forward, we let them play and that was a big problem for us.”

Quite simply, though, that may be down to even bigger problems than fatigue; most of all, mental resilience. Donegal’s Jim McGuinness was at the Emirates on Saturday and Arsenal could perhaps do with him more than Celtic.

It was rather remarkable that, after Olivier Giroud and Lukas Podolski had put Arsenal 2-0 ahead within 23 minutes, Fulham weren’t any way cowed at being in such a position away to one of the league’s elite sides. Quite the opposite. Sensing a vulnerability within Arsenal, Martin Jol’s side admirably went for it. They were also rewarded.

With the Arsenal marking almost non-existent, the excellent Dimitar Berbatov plundered Fulham’s first before then crossing for Alex Kacaniklic to score the second.

And, although Arsenal did respond to that in the second half, Fulham still had enough to force Mikel Arteta into a foul in the box. From the resulting penalty, Berbatov stroked home the third.

Those three goals finally ended Arsenal’s record for having the best defence in the league. It was a stat that always seemed somewhat illusory but, as talk grows that the relationship between Wenger and Steve Bould isn’t as strong as at the start of the season, the manager complained about having insufficient time to solve any problems.

“There is no time to train on it because the players go away every three days and you cannot practice too much... there is never a week where you have completely to prepare for the next game. It’s part of being Arsenal.”

So, it seems, is mixed feelings and strange contradictions. Although Arsenal could then take heart from their response and the radically improved performance of Giroud, who also plundered the equaliser on 69, Arteta himself then missed the stoppage-time penalty that could have won it.

In truth, defeat would have been as harsh on Fulham as the handball decision that led to that spot-kick.

Wenger refused to blame Arteta but couldn’t help admitting a goal would have changed so much of the debate.

“If you score the penalty, nobody speaks about it. We were close to doing and we’ll have to do it in the next game.”

That is the derby against Tottenham.

Fatigue won’t quite cut it for any dropped points there.

ARSENAL: Mannone; Sagna, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Vermaelen; Coquelin (Ramsey 56), Arteta, Cazorla; Walcott (Arshavin 85), Giroud, Podolski (Oxlade-Chamberlain 76)

FULHAM: Schwarzer, Riether, Hangeland, Hughes, Riise; Baird, Sidwell, Richardson (Kacaniklic 24); Dejageh (Duff 86), Ruiz, Berbatov

Referee: Phil Dowd