Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has said that his side were certainly not at its best in the recent match against Sunderland. Arsenal began the new Premier league season with the home match against Sunderland. However, they could not win the match even with the attacking threat of both Lukas Podolski and Santi Cazorla. They were brought into the club for a combined £ 30 million, but they failed to combine effect against Sunderland. When asked about the prospect of not having Robin van Persie to change the game, Arsene Wenger said that they certainly miss the Dutchman, but will be able to recover from the loss.

Arsenal sold Robin van Persie for £ 24 million, despite the striker having only one season left on his current deal. This combined with the fact that the player was 29 years old made it one of the best deals in the summer. Robin van Persie, though, was a crucial element in Arsenal finishing in the third position last season because he scored more than 30 goals in the league alone. Wenger reckons that any team will struggle to replace striker of the quality of Robin van Persie, but expects Arsenal to adapt to the new players soon enough.

“I feel that Podolski is not [physically] ready yet, but he has the quality, and Giroud you could see has a presence when he is on the pitch in this position. We went for a different formula last year and the balance is not always right. In some games it works, in some not. Against Sunderland we maybe needed one more creative player to be a bit more accurate in the final third. There was not a lot of space left to our strikers, everything had to be created from our midfield,” said Wenger after the match.