UK Edition
Arsene Wenger says key Arsenal players were 'tapped up' before 4-0 Liverpool drubbing
Arsene Wenger has claimed that key Arsenal players were “tapped up” before the 4-0 drubbing against Liverpool last month and bluntly told his critics that he will never change his footballing principles.
A combination of the inept performance against Liverpool and a chaotic transfer window has prompted fierce criticism of Wenger’s methods but, in an extraordinarily wide-ranging press conference yesterday, he argued both for perspective and a radical overhaul of the rules governing transfers. In it, Wenger said that:
- First-team players had been illegally approached before the Liverpool defeat,
- Called for an end to Financial Fair Play and restraint on owner spending,
- Claimed that Alexis Sanchez may still extend his contract
- Admitted that he sold Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain for financial reasons,
- Claimed that the media was encouraging fans to turn on Arsenal,
- Told critical club legends that they also sometimes had bad games and poor behaviour,
- Rejected suggestions that Arsenal should change style and needed to learn to win “ugly”.
Wenger had controversially started both Oxlade-Chamberlain and Sanchez against Liverpool, despite both players having clearly signalled their desire to leave by rejecting contract offers. Oxlade-Chamberlain did complete a £35 million move to Liverpool but Sanchez’s £60 million transfer to Manchester City collapsed once Monaco’s Thomas Lemar rejected Arsenal. There was also doubt over Shkodran Mustafi’s future and Arsenal had been forced earlier in the summer to formally warn off Barcelona over Hector Bellerin.
As well as the agreed shortening of the summer transfer window, Wenger also wants the January transfer period abolished. Specific players or clubs went unmentioned but, asked if people had been tapped up before the Liverpool defeat, he said: “You are not naive enough to think that will not happen. Have they been tapped up? Of course.
“But on the day of a game? I don’t think so. I hope not. But it’s inevitable. France played against Holland on the last day of the transfer window. Do you really think that not one French player or Dutch player had phone calls in the afternoon? I’m not naive enough to believe that. That’s why you have to scrap it before the season starts.
“Many things happen in the last second, which I regret. You sit there before the games and, in players’ minds, they have no clarity. Are they in? Are they out? Are they half in? Are they half out? Are they tapped up in the afternoon of the game by people who want to get them out? It’s not the way to work and it’s uncomfortable.
“Every single manager in the league would agree that it’s time to kick that out before the season starts and not continue to have players in the dressing room who are half out and half in.”
Wenger was also one of football’s great advocates of Financial Fair Play – the principle that clubs must only spend what they can earn – but the inflation of the transfer market has persuaded him that the rules are redundant. “Football is maybe only at the start of a huge financial investment,” he said. “It has become the most powerful sport in the world. That means, ‘Do we have to open the door completely to investments?’ That is a question we have to raise because, at the moment, it looks like we have created rules that cannot be respected.
“Nothing works when you create rules that cannot be respected. Maybe we are at the crossroads and have to think, ‘Do we open it completely?’ Freedom to investment for people like the Chinese or Americans who want to invest here? Why not? If you want to remain the best league in the world, that is certainly the way we have to go. There are too many legal ways to get around Financial Fair Play.”
Wenger admitted that his repeated summer stance that Sanchez must stay would have softened should Arsenal have sourced a younger replacement of comparable quality, but that they simply could not also turn down a big offer for Oxlade-Chamberlain, who was in the last year of his contract.
Asked if Sanchez could still stay beyond next season, Wenger said: “There is a chance, yes. He is committed and focused on Arsenal.”
Of the row between various Arsenal ‘legends’ and Mesut Ozil – another player in the last year of his contract – Wenger pointed out that his critics also had their bad days for the club. “I’ve had all the players here but they all had their weaknesses,” the Frenchman insisted. “They had their weak games and their weak behaviours. Nobody was perfect.
“I must say I love my players, I believe in my players and we have a good opportunity to show that we have the quality that people want from us. For me every defeat is a crisis. You question your decisions, you question your preparation and absolutely everything. What is important is that you stick to your principles.”