Wenger defiant

English FA Premiership: Arsene Wenger knows his team's season has reached its defining moment

English FA Premiership: Arsene Wenger knows his team's season has reached its defining moment. Arsenal travel to Southampton today for the final game of a month that has seen them loosen their grip on the two trophies they covet most.

Defeat against Manchester United left them lagging behind in the Premiership, and Tuesday's mauling away to Bayern Munich means they need a spectacular finish to the campaign or it will end as the worst since Wenger arrived in September 1996. "The next two weeks will decide our season," said Wenger. "I feel it is important that we give a great response."

The news that Sol Campbell's ankle injury is likely to keep him out for the whole fortnight, including the second leg against Bayern, has not helped. "I would like him to be here, but we have to be positive and we have to deal with it," he said.

The FA Cup seems the most realistic aspiration this season, but the Arsenal manager disagrees. "Do you really know what our potential is?" he asked. "I don't. Is the real potential of the team to win the Premier League? Is the real potential to win the FA Cup? Is it to win the Champions League?"

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The Frenchman feels the cause of his disappointment is English football's inflated perception of itself. "I don't know where this English superiority complex comes from," said Wenger. "Bayern Munich has won the European Cup four times and Arsenal zero. Where has Arsenal won anything in Europe? The Cup Winners' Cup or the UEFA Cup - but that's not the champions' cup. What right do we have to walk out and say we have to win in the European Cup against Bayern Munich?" The defeat still pains him, though. "It hurts," he said, before adding that he is more emotional than his public persona suggests.

"I'm angry every day," he said. "It doesn't mean, because I don't show it here, that I'm not angry. The fact that this team has performed like no one else in the last three years in this championship should not be thrown away."

Although those three years have included no Champions League triumph, he believes the status of all England's elite clubs should be put into perspective. "I don't think that the English League is stronger than the Italian or the Spanish League," he said.

Despite this, Wenger is bullish. "I think it is a miracle that Arsenal is in the Champions League every year considering the strength of the English League. It is not a scandal that we don't win it."

But Wenger has not yet given up on this year's trophy. "Everybody writes us off at the moment. I still believe we can do it. If at the end of the season I am wrong, I am wrong. Then we start again, because life is like that." Guardian Service