Arsenal followed up their league defeat of Manchester United with a home loss to Aston Villa and boss Arsene Wenger admits this lack of consistent form puzzles him. The Frenchman said on the club's official website: "Top level performance is consistency. At the moment we are not consistent enough to produce that kind of performance week-in week-out.

"I don't believe that you can speak about champions or not champions. If you want to be champions you want to be consistent and at the moment we are not. "It is very difficult for us to have a rational explanation about what happened today.

"I believe that the team want it but it was just like a few other times this year where it is unexplainable why we don't really play at our 100 per cent potential."