Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger is very happy to archive the month of March as he welcomes April – and not just because of April Fools’ Day – with a smile on his face.

The Frenchman knows that what his players are to accomplish to be crowned champions in England is to win all remaining games, nine, including the difficult home game against Manchester United in May. Asked about a “fresh start” and what he told the players ahead of the last two months of the season, the Arsenal boss agreed that it is a new start as last month was a very difficult one for his side.

Wenger added that he told the players to look forward, to forget about the past as worrying about what happened last month could harm their progress in the Premier League race.

Explaining that attitude-wide his players were fantastic this season, Wenger concluded by saying that the three quick Cup exists were down to difficult back-to-back fixtures which the Gunners had to approach without key players as he believes his players don’t deserve to end the season trophyless.

On Friday afternoon, the manager said:

Our target is to continue our unbeaten run. It was under threat especially at West Brom, two nil down. We had a very difficult March I must say on all fronts so [April] is a new start now.

[I told the players] that to worry about yesterday you harm tomorrow’s chances. Let’s look forward at what we can achieve and nobody can reproach us that we have not tried to go for absolutely everything and what is important now is to focus on what we still can achieve.

I feel we had been a bit unlucky with the fixtures because we had many important games one after each other and it was very difficult to deal with that because we lost many players. But attitude-wide this group has been fantastic and they deserve to be rewarded.