Crown slips from Gunners

LONDON: With the league football title seemingly on the way to Manchester United, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger is venting his anger and frustration.

With three league matches and the FA Cup final against Southampton to go, Wenger has three more players on the sidelines after Saturday’s 2-2 tie at Bolton. The Gunners are five points behind Manchester United although they have a match in hand. But United will win the title this weekend if they beat Charlton at home on Saturday and Arsenal fail to beat Leeds at Highbury. With Patrick Vieira expected to be out of action until the May 17 Cup final and Sol Campbell suspended for all four matches, Wenger saw Freddie Ljungberg, Pascal Cygan and Cameroon defender Lauren all go off injured against Wanderers.

“They were eliminated by bad tackles,” said Wenger who accused Wanderers manager Sam Allardyce of trying to get the referee on his side before the match. Allardyce was reported to have said that Arsenal was the worst team for intimidating referees. “I don’t like the way Allardyce prepared that match with the referee,” Wenger said. “He put him under unbelievable pressure.” Although Arsenal lost three players through injury, it was Allardyce who wound up criticising the performance of referee Andy D’Urso for sending off Florent Laville for two yellow cards near the end.

Wenger admitted his team should not have conceded two late goals to Bolton after taking a 2-0 lead through Sylvain Wiltord and Robert Pires. “I have a lot of regrets about the two bad goals we conceded at Bolton. With the experience we have it was very disappointing,” he said. “All we can do now is try to win our last three league matches and hope teams show the same commitment against Manchester United as Bolton did against us.”