Arsenal vs Liverpool – Mind Games (Wenger vs Rodgers)

Liverpool travel to Emirates to face the league leaders, Arsenal in a highly anticipated premier league game on Saturday. Mind games have already started between the two experienced managers.

Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers accepted the challenge of facing the league leaders and claimed that a win over the Gunners would set a benchmark for the Anfield Side.

He said,

“It is a good benchmark for us,”

“We have shown that we have quality in the team, that we’ve got a winning mentality, which is important, and that we can consistently bring that to the table.”

“Saturday won’t be the be-all-and-end-all in terms of whether we can make the top four or not, but what we have shown so far is that we are going to be in the conversation.”

When asked about the possibility of Suarez leaving to Arsenal, Rodgers commented,

“I understand why Arsenal would want to buy a player of Luis’ quality because he is one of the leading strikers in the world but it was something that was never going to happen,” said Rodgers ahead of the trip to the Emirates Stadium.”

“For us and the institution we are we certainly weren’t going to sell to a rival, a competitor, and that was something which was very strong from the off.”

“There was all sorts of gossip on the summer but we were very firm in our leadership, from the top right the way through, that this was something we didn’t want to do.”

On the other hand, Arsene Wenger is confident that his team has enough quality to claim all three points against the visitors from Merseyside.

Wenger said in the pre-match conference,

“It’s important. It is a big game for us and we want to respond well. It was a disappointment on Tuesday [against Chelsea], and we want to respond in a very strong way in a competition where we are in a very strong position.”

“We have had a very good away record in recent years and we have suffered a bit more at home,” Wenger said. “One of the targets is to turn that around. We need the supporters to help us to do that and I am sure they will.”

“You can see that I’m quite relaxed because I have the complete confidence that we will deal well with that period and I take that as an opportunity to show our strengths and I am completely sure that the players will be up for it.”

“What we want first is to convince everybody that we can play at the top and hopefully in April we can ask ourselves have we got enough resources to cross the line.”