From David : AW and Yaya
Some friends and I met Wenger pre-season a couple of years ago. We were dining at the same local restaurant and when he got up to leave one of my friends invited him to join us. He did and we chatted to him about Arsenal and football generally for about 45 minutes. One of my friends suggested that AW should buy Yaya and AW instantly replied that Yaya didn’t run the distances that AW thought were necessary for a midfielder. He said that Yaya would need to be substituted in too many games in the last 20 minutes. He actually quoted stats on average distances run during games by various named midfielders.
We chatted about a very wide range of football based topics with him and he certainly seemed genuine in his replies and comments. It wasn’t like an interview, it was a chat. He just seemed like a bloke who would rather talk about football than go home to an empty house – his wife and daughter were still away on holiday.