Ex Arsenal star, Bacary Sagna has come out to say that the club under-evaluated its own skill during the 2010-11 season, and the self-esteem of the players cost them trophies on several fronts.
Sagna recently revealed that even if the club won lots of games while he played, they failed to get the required points when it mattered the most.
According to him, Arsenal failed to defeat the top four teams even if they had players who could match up to the quality of oppositions.
He added that Eduador’s serious injury was also a shock to everyone at the time because he was more like a brother to all his teammates.
His words, “We just played game by game and we were winning a lot but obviously and eventually when we had to perform in certain games, we were failing,”
“Maybe it was because we put too much pressure on ourselves.
“Most of the games we had to play, we played well and we won. But for example when we had to play against the top four, we found it difficult to play against them at that time.
“I believe we under-evaluated ourselves. Playing for Chelsea image-wise was something different. They used their image a lot, they used to have some big players in the national team and we used to talk about them more than they talked about us.
“Maybe in our heads, they were bigger players than us. On the pitch, we had as much quality as they had whenever we played, and when we played the Arsenal way nobody could beat us.
“I believed nobody could beat us. We used to play simple passes, one, two-touches maximum. But I believe we under-evaluated ourselves which is a big mistake in life.”
On Eduador’s injury, “It was a shock to everyone,”
“We were shocked because Eduardo was our brother and when someone gets hurt, everyone gets hurt.
“I don’t know if it had an impact on the rest of the game, but for sure it was a turning point in our season.
“That season, every time he was in front of goal, he used to score. He was so confident. We stick together and we fight together. When you lose someone, back in the day we were young and maybe we didn’t know how to deal with these kinds of injuries.
“For most of us, it was the first time of seeing it live. We had to be able to separate feelings and work, but as I said before we’re only humans. It was just a bad day, a bad memory.”
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