{"id":3445,"date":"2014-04-11T02:45:13","date_gmt":"2014-04-11T02:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=3445"},"modified":"2014-04-11T02:45:13","modified_gmt":"2014-04-11T02:45:13","slug":"arsenal-will-respect-wigan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/arsenal-will-respect-wigan\/","title":{"rendered":"Arsenal Will Respect Wigan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Arsenal are just two victories away from ending their nine-year wait for a trophy after reaching the FA Cup last four and manager Arsene Wenger insists he is still a winner.<\/p>\n

The Gunners are favourites to reach the final against Championship promotion hopefuls and holders Wigan on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Even then the season could end on a sour note if they finish outside the top four in the Premier League and miss out on the Champions League for the first time since 1998.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

The Frenchman was recently branded a ‘specialist in failure’ by Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho.<\/p>\n

But on Thursday he said: “Don’t imagine I sacrifice every day of my life not to win a trophy. Everybody fights for that.<\/p>\n

“We all play to win something. If you are in the FA Cup everyone can dream of winning it at the start of the season.<\/p>\n

“The Championship – only seven clubs can dream of winning it at the start of the season.<\/p>\n

“It is a dream open to everybody and that is the beauty of the FA Cup.”<\/p>\n

Aresenal’s last trophy was the 2005 FA Cup.<\/p>\n

But amazingly, Wenger admits his men didn’t deserve to win it, via a penalty shoot-out against Manchester United.<\/p>\n

Wenger said: “In fact in 2005 we did not deserve to win the final.<\/p>\n

“Being defensive was the only way we could win it.<\/p>\n

The Arsenal boss will not take any chances against FA Cup holders Wigan this Saturday and insists his team will respect the Championship side.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

“At the start I didn’t set up like that and suddenly they were all over us and I realised that physically we were not able to compete, so I said ‘ok let’s defend as long as we can’.”<\/p>\n

The pressure to win a trophy cranked up on Wenger after Arsenal’s path to FA Cup glory opened up.<\/p>\n

Wigan stunned big boys Manchester City to set up the semi with favourites Arsenal.<\/p>\n

Hull and League One Sheffield United will meet in the other Wembley semi on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Wenger said: “The draw was Manchester City or Wigan so we have not been favoured by the draw.<\/p>\n

“Before that we played Liverpool, Everton and Tottenham.<\/p>\n

“We want to respect Wigan because they have shown against Manchester City they can be a dangerous team.”<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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Arsenal are just two victories away from ending their nine-year wait for a trophy after reaching the FA Cup last four and manager Arsene Wenger insists he is still a winner. The Gunners are favourites to reach the final against Championship promotion hopefuls and holders Wigan on Saturday. Even then the season could end on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,80],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3445"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3448,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3445\/revisions\/3448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}