While last night's defeat at home to Swansea was a shock in some ways, it's not like Arsenal have not endured collective collapses in performance on a semi-regular basis.
Before last night's 2-1 home defeat I spoke to ex-Arsenal midfielder David Bentley about what it's like to work under Arsene Wenger in a wider-ranging chat that will be broadcast on Team 33 next Tuesday (Tottenham's 2009 Christmas trip to Coppers nightclub with Robbie Keane and co comes up).
He had an interesting insight into why Arsenal's technical brilliance can often find itself picked apart by teams of varying strength on occasion.
"He's probably the best manager I've had. I mean, technically he's got everything and he's got the passion and he's obsessed with the game," said Bentley of Wenger.
David Bentley has been chatting to @Raftastico about Wenger, 'Arry and more for next week's Team 33 pic.twitter.com/3C5qVsi0kP
— Newstalk's Team 33 (@teamthirtythree) March 2, 2016
"Every minute of the day he's thinking about the game. He knows everything about it. Sometimes it can make it sort of ... you need that human element, you know. Maybe sometimes, it can kind of miss that."
When the point was made that perhaps the media accusations of Arsenal not having leaders and not talking on the pitch when matches go off script may be indirectly related to this, Bentley replied: "That's exactly it. That's why it happens like that. Sometimes, everything technically is right, sometimes you need a little bit of a human kind of thing."
The full Team 33 interview with Bentley will be broadcast and podcasted next Tuesday on Newstalk.
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