Dubai: Arsenal will need greater harmony between fans and players if they are to get back to being a title contending club again next season, according to Gunners right-back Hector Bellerin.
The North London club are currently sixth in the Premier League, 13 points behind fourth-placed Tottenham with eight games to go, but they could still qualify for the Champions League next season by winning this year’s Europa League, where they face CSKA Moscow in next month’s quarter-final.
“I think it’s just about getting together as a team and fans,” said the 23-year-old Spaniard on the sidelines of an Arsenal Soccer Schools visit at the Sevens Stadium on Friday, when asked what it was the club needed to do to improve next season.
“For the past few seasons there has been a little bit of a fight going on there with people demanding different things,” he said, alluding to the campaign to sack long serving coach Arsene Wenger.
“But it’s important, for our club to have success, for everyone to be on the same side, and when we have that, the chances for success are much bigger than before.”
Arsenal have lost three of the past four games in the league, only recovering with a 3-0 win at home to Watford last week.
If their season was judged on away form alone, they would be 10th in the table having lost eight out of 15 on their travels, including most recently away to league minnows Bournemouth and Brighton. This is in stark contrast to their home form at the Emirates Stadium where they’ve held Chelsea and Liverpool and beaten Spurs.
Fellow Arsenal defender Calum Chambers, who is also in Dubai with Bellerin and Rob Holding, admitted: “I think with some results we’ve just been a bit unlucky this year. We need to be more consistent. Our away form hasn’t been good, we need to improve and that’s the main thing going into next year.”
Bellerin agreed: “For us it’s about irregularity. We’ve shown that when we play well we can beat any team, the only problem is we have to replicate that week in week out.
“Sometimes that comes down to depth of a dressing room or the squad and stuff like that, but that’s for the coaches and people with more knowledge to decide.”
Of Manchester City, who lead the table by 16 points, 33 points clear of Arsenal, he said the difference was clear: “It’s true that teams like Man City; all their starting eleven and even those on the bench, are all internationals with loads of experience. That obviously makes a difference in a season with so many games.”
Arsenal offloaded Alexis Sanchez to Manchester United in exchange for United’s former Borussia Dortmund midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan in January, while also bringing in Mkhitaryan’s old Dortmund teammate, striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, for a reported club record fee of £56 million.
“People come in and out, that’s the way football works,” said fellow Arsenal defender Holding of the new signings. “It’s about being together, working with each other. Seeing them linking up now with their links from Dortmund, we’ll hopefully push on and start clicking.”
