2010-01-18 : Bolton Wanderers 0 - 2 Arsenal

Wenger: We have a chance to fight for the title

Dear Arsenal Supporter,

We expected a fully committed Bolton team on Sunday and we were not disappointed.

They gave absolutely everything and put us under pressure with long balls. We tried to get the ball down and play and sometimes it worked well. We dropped our level a little bit in the second half and that's where Bolton had a 20-minute period where they had chances and looked dangerous.

I believe that the pitch was not easy for our game so our passing was not always exceptional. It was important for us not to go into the last 15 minutes only one goal up. The second goal from Fran Merida killed the game.

Cesc Fabregas scored the first and if you watched the game you can see that he is important to us. What is very interesting for us is that Cesc gets stronger and stronger and has more personality on the pitch, like the whole team. He will be 23 this year so he is just starting to reach his best form.

Cesc is fit again and it is vital not to lose any more players because in the last 72 hours we lost Aaron Ramsey and Samir Nasri to injuries - they will both be out for three weeks - and we now go into a period where every game becomes very, very important. We survived OK when Cesc wasn't there in recent weeks but in the period coming up now where we have so many big games it is important to have him in the team.

Craig Eastmond made his Premier League debut and he showed that he has qualities to be a player for us but on some occasions as well he showed that he is not ready. In the second half he got tired and then he started to lose some balls that you do not want to lose but overall it was an interesting performance from him.

We have a chance to go top of the Premier League on Wednesday night and our motivation will be 100 per cent against Bolton. We know that we are in a quite interesting position where nobody expected us to be. We have the belief and we really want to have a go. You have seen on Sunday that Bolton made life difficult for us so we have to be completely focused.

We know that there is a long way to go. We are a big club and when you are a big club the most difficult thing is like what happened last season, when in October you know you will not fight for the title. Now we have a chance to fight for it so let's have a go.

Thanks for your support.

Arsène Wenger