Arsenal Not Ready For New Season

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has admitted that his side "are not ready" for the new Premier League season.

The Gunners were beaten 4-3 by Liverpool in a thrilling opening match at the Emirates Stadium this afternoon, with Wenger missing a host of players through injury and lack of match fitness following Euro 2016.

Aaron Ramsey did start despite making it to the semi-finals in France, but he limped off with a hamstring injury and Wenger is uncertain what state his players will be in for next weekend's match against champions Leicester City.

"Physically we are not ready. You are in a catch 22 situation with the Euros - do you give the players a rest and start the season without many of your players? Or do they play in this kind of game and get injured, like Ramsey today? We had many players that played very late in the Euros - Ramsey, Koscielny, Ozil, Giroud - they went to the semi-finals [at least]. We had four players who went very late," he told reporters.

"We will try, but when they have not enough preparation they get injured. You could see that we dropped physically today. It was a game of contrast between two halves but I felt as well that mentally we kept going and we have been absolutely remarkable on that front. We have to be ready next week because we go to Leicester. But we'll see first what we can do with the players who are preparing at the moment and how many players are injured today - can they recover for next week? I don't know.

"But we are not stupid. We prepared well the players we have in but I think you have to consider we have been a bit unlucky as well. We have lost Mertesacker and Gabriel in preparation, and Koscielny is not fit. You have to sometimes accept that you cannot control absolutely everything, even if you try to be as intelligent as possible."

Arsenal have now lost their opening match of the season in three of the last four campaigns.