Jenas draws comparisons between his Tottenham team and the current Arsenal side
By Harvey Byrne
BBC pundit Jermaine Jenas has shared how the current Arsenal team is similar to the Tottenham side he played in.
The now 33-year-old spent eight years at Spurs between 2005 and 2013 in a time where Spurs’ highest finish was fourth place.
He did however, help Tottenham win the League Cup in a 2-1 victory over Chelsea in 2008 and he believes the Gunners have lost the mentality of looking to win the league and are now more focused on doing well in the cup competitions.
“When I look at Arsenal now, I look at them almost similar to my Spurs side that I played in when we had like Modric and Bale and Van Der Vaart, Crouchy up top, Ledley and Woodgate at the back,” told Jenas to BBC Five Live on Friday evening.
“We had really good individuals within our side, all international players, but we didn’t actually have that mentality that Andy’s (Cole) talking of.
“When we started the season not one person, not one manager, not one player looked at each other and went ‘we’re going to win the league’, or ‘our goal is to set out to win the league.
“It was ‘oh we’ll just hopefully win at the weekend or we’re going to go for top four, maybe try and get a run in the cup.
“When you look back at your career that mentality is not right, but when I think about Arsenal how have they allowed this sort of mentality to infiltrate their camp almost.
“They were a team that was chasing titles and all of a sudden now whether it’s Arsene Wenger that’s allowing this or it’s the club they’ve just kind of become this top four club that chases the cups instead of chasing the league.”
Arsene Wenger’s side have not won the Premier League title since their unbeaten season in 2004, but they have won the FA Cup three times as well as finishing runners up in the League Cup twice in that time.
Many felt that the Gunners’ best opportunity to win the league came last year as Leicester went on to lift the title, taking advantages of the likes of Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United all struggling.
In the current season both north London clubs are level on 47 points after 23 matches, occupying the second and third spots.
They sit nine spots behind leaders and fellow London rivals Chelsea, but they will still have aspirations of winning the title with 15 matches left in the league season.
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