Arsenal facing fresh injury crisis after Aaron Ramsey and Alex Iwobi hurt in Liverpool defeat

ARSENE WENGER admitted his team were not ready for the start of the season after woeful Arsenal were booed off by the Emirates fans — again.

The under-fire Gunners boss blamed a lack of preparation for his team’s humiliating 4-3 defeat by Liverpool.

It was the third time in four years they have lost at home on the opening day. Angry Gooners chanted at Wenger: “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

And the Frenchman revealed that Aaron Ramsey and Alex Iwobi are both struggling to make Saturday’s trip to champs Leicester after being forced out of yesterday’s game by injury.

Wenger said: “We are bitterly disappointed. We lost the game for many reasons but mainly because we are not physically capable at the moment, because not all the players have the same level of preparation.

“We are not ready physically. It’s a Catch 22 situation. We have players who stayed very late at the Euros and we had to give them a rest.

“If the players are not ready to play in this sort of game and don’t have the preparation, they get injured, like Ramsey today. He has a hamstring injury but I don’t know how bad it is yet.

“We are not stupid. We prepare the players we have but we have been very unlucky to lose Per Mertesacker and Gabriel in our preparations when Laurent Koscielny is not fit.

“But we can’t control absolutely everything. We try to be as intelligent as possible.

“I have said many times that we are looking very hard to get one or two players in. But they need to make sense and be of quality.”

Wenger is hoping that Koscielny, Mesut Ozil and Olivier Giroud could all be available for Saturday’s trip to the King Power Stadium.

Yet he refused to blame rookie centre-backs Rob Holding, a £2.5million signing from Bolton, and Calum Chambers for yesterday’s defeat. He added: “We lacked experience at the back but if you
look at the goals we conceded, it wasn’t necessarily the inexperienced players who cost us today.

“Liverpool’s first goal was a big shock for us because we didn’t see that coming and maybe we didn’t recover too much from that.

“But we kept going mentally and we have been absolutely remarkable on that front.”