Most would consider a visit to California in July a holiday. For Arsène Wenger such a trip is anything but. Arsenal began a stretch of two friendlies within 72 hours on Thursday night by defeating Major League Soccer’s All-Stars 2-1 at Avaya Stadium, and they face CD Guadalajara on Sunday in metropolitan Los Angeles.
The end game, however, remains the same: ending the 12-year wait for a league title. Wenger thinks his squad have what it takes but railed at the transfer spend of some of their rivals, describing it as “scary”.
Wenger said: “I personally believe that no matter what you do, it’s never enough. In the Premier League, every club is hugely ambitious. With the cheques that everybody signs, it’s quite scary. But I believe we know what we have to do.”
Of the quick turnaround Wenger said: “It’s tough for us. We are in a very hard training programme at the moment, so you never know how tired the players are when you go into the games. But it was good to see that we were in good shape. We’ve had two hard days in our training sessions just before we played today, and it was good to see that everybody did well.”
The Swiss midfielder Granit Xhaka and the defender Rob Holding both made their debuts here. Xhaka, a £30m signing from Borussia Mönchengladbach, played the entire second half. “He has adjusted very well,” Wenger said. “His passing was clean and he did well with his technique.”
Holding, Bolton’s player of the season as they were relegated from the Championship, played the entire match with the 18-year-old Krystian Bielik in central defence. “He has adapted surprisingly well,” Wenger said of the 20-year-old Holding. “He reads the game well and understands what’s going on at such a young age.”
Playing against a squad that included such notables as Andrea Pirlo, Didier Drogba, David Villa and Kaka offers its own challenges and opportunities – even in a friendly. “The contact is a bit less strong,” Wenger said. “But you had top-quality players on the pitch together, and you feel that every time you make a mistake, they can take advantage of you.
“What is important in this kind of game is to analyse what we do well. In the first half, we did good in keeping possession and going very quickly on transitions behind, and had good penetrating runs in the final third.”
