Per Mertesacker has revealed that Arsenal players are all comfortable playing under Arsene Wenger, but the German defender has also admitted that the team haven't been willing to fight at times.
Mertesacker is finally over his knee injury, having spent the entire season on the sidelines so far. He could be involved in his first match of the campaign when the Gunners host Bayern Munich at the Emirates on Tuesday, hoping to somehow overturn a 5-1 deficit suffered in the first leg of the Champions Leagueround of 16 tie.
Speaking on Monday,ahead of the match, the team captain urged his teammates to show some fight, something they haven't been doing in recent times.
"I think we saw on a lot of occasions that we were absolutely not ready for a fight," he declared, via theDaily Mail.
"That's what I want to see tomorrow, that we are up for a fight, to challenge something. We haven't competed a lot in recent games, we need to turn that around.
"I think it's up to us to show a different face tomorrow. That is really something we are going to demand because we literally blew it away in the second half there (in Munich) and being in that position.
"So it's really down to us now to make the first step to make our fans proud of ourselves again. That is really something that we need the emphasis on."
Wenger's benching of Alexis Sanchez against Liverpool on Saturday proved a huge talking point, and several reports are claiming that the Chilean isn't on good terms with his manager.
Mertesacker, however, defended the Frenchman's selection, claiming that he has complete trust from his players.
"The one thing about the Liverpool game is that there were 11 players on the pitch. We had a real chance to go for it, to push it even without our best player on the pitch," he insisted.
"It's not always the manager. It's hard for him now to select, he does it with his best knowledge and we trust him. He has got a lot of options now.
Alexis Sanchez' latest Instagram post.
Roughly translates to:
"I'm working my bollocks off whilst my team mates aren't really that arsed" pic.twitter.com/fHdTqbCbWp
"It is not going to be about one single player and all these questions about one player is very disruptive to our team. Tomorrow we have got a game to face that is really important to our team, not to one individual player.
"We have shown on many occasions that we can turn it around and we are happy to play for him, yes."
Kavan Flavius is a regular contributor to the Official Chelsea Guest Fan Blog, find him on Twitter@KavanFlavius.