Arsene Wenger: The next month will tell me if Arsenal can challenge for the Premier League

Arsene Wenger has admitted that the next month will decide whether Arsenal are strong enough to maintain their brilliant early form and mount a challenge for the title.

Wenger said: “It’s very frustrating. In England, you always get injuries in November. You look at the statistics and they always happen in November and then you know in December you can win or lose the championship.

“You want your players to be available and the only team which seems to have all its players available is Chelsea.

“It’s the volume of games. You play on different pitches, players play international games, you have the end of the first phase of Champions League games and you could have played 20 games.

“Chelsea are top of the league but they are not really dominating and if we win our game in hand on Chelsea and Manchester United, we will be very close as well.

“Chelsea have shown they can lose as well. It’s more important for us to show consistency and it’s too early for us to speculate on Chelsea having injuries.

“It’s more important for us because they have a big squad. But I am convinced that our squad is still strong enough.

“If you look at the players we have out, we have Walcott, Bendtner, Clichy, all these players out, but we still have a very strong squad.”