By Myles Palmer
Arsene Wenger is an agreeably transparent manager who does not duck a question. If you ask him why he did something, or why he did not do something, he tells you.
He is not evasive, keeping some information back like a crafty politician,so that he can give it to some favoured hack.He just does press conferences. He never does one-on-one interviews.
In a press conferences he often tells you a lot.But you have to ask because there is a lot of stuff he won’t tell you if you don’t ask.
Saturday seemed a good moment to ask about Anfield after Luzhny was injured. You didn’t bring Stepanovs on. Was it because of Heskey?
“Yes. But as well we were 1-0 down and we weren’t creating enough,and I wanted to bring Pires on, so I moved Grimandi back into defence.”
That was pretty much what we figured. At 1-0 down Arsene is still looking to win a game, not save it. He believes in his players. Does he have too much faith in them? Maybe, but that is not a fault.
If Arsene had brought Stepanovs on against Liverpool he might have made him part of a 4-0 defeat.
By saving him for Leicester he made him part of a 6-1 victory. That is good management. And he gave everybody a chance to see the player we have wanted to see for three months.
He was talking about Thierry Henry and I said, “Three goals, two assists and two headers on target?”
Arsene just smiled and said, “I wasn’t surprised by the three goals, I wasn’t surprised by the two assists, but I was surprised by the two headers on target.”
He said they had not had much time to practice anything recently.Was he saying they had not practiced Henry’s headers recently? Was he saying that today’s abundance of crosses, and those headers, just happened?
Because, let’s face it, a lot of stuff in life, in sport, in politics, in showbusiness, just happens. And later those events have huge theories constructed around them by pundits who think they are clever and write for each other.
However, while Arsene is much straighter than George Graham, he is not above teasing us just a litttle.
George, who learned the value of free-kicks from Terry Venables, could be evasive when asked about his set-piece routines. Sometimes he would grin and say, “Totally off-the cuff!” At other times he would be more straightforward. He would say, “The harder you practice, the luckier you get.”
Arsene is painfully aware of his team’s abysmal results on the road.
“When you look at the possession we have away from home and the chances we have away from home, I think it’s more down to confidence than to team attitude or team organisation. Because we played every year the same and we have a bad patch. I’m still confident we can address that problem. But the basis for a good season is to be strong at home and that’s what we have to show till the end of the season. I’m sure I will find a way to solve our away problem.”
Henry sometimes doesn’t seem to enjoy scoring as other strikers do.He sits on the ground, almost as if he’s missed a chance?He doesn’t show the emotions that most goalscorers show.
“Sometimes he does.He’s unpredictable in that way.Like he is sometimes on the field.”
Are you worried that your opponents might have found a pattern for making it hard for you away from home?
“Yes, at the moment we lost games where the opponents accepted our domination. And just played like away. And we played like at home without being at home.And I feel that many times we got a little bit trapped away from home because the teams didn’t really have a go atus.But waited with a passive attitude, and went for long balls. That’s the
kind of games we lost until now.”
Can you catch United now?
“It’s too early to say that. They need to drop their level and we need to be consistent first. We can’t do anything about them. We can only do something about us, so let’s first be consistent.”
Did you expect Leicester to be so defensive?
“Yes, because they have a good defensive away record. They don’t concede goals. It always looked as if they wanted us to come out and hit us on the break. As long as you don’t score the second goal you are a little bit nervous, but they couldn’t threaten us offensively enough to really give us a problem.”
PETER TAYLOR is a practical , pragmatic character who talks in a matter-of-fact style.If his team has played well he is happy. If it has played badly he owns up with no excuses, no whingeing, no spin.
He is sporting and decent enough to praise his opponents without giving them backhanded compliments.
I asked Peter if Arsenal had surprised him by having some of their normal fast attacks, but also crossing the ball a lot today.
“Well, they didn’t surprise me in respect that,after losing at Liverpool, that made me a touch nervous coming here. Because good players always bounce back very quickly. What was nice for us to see today was how well Arsenal closed down as a team. We know about their ability. We were poor today on the ball, but a lot to do with that was the way they closed down as a group. So we knew about the strength of Arsenal before the game and we certainly know about it now.”
Was it because Arsenal were so good?
“Arsenal have world class players but we let them have a stroll today, I thought. I don’t think we had enough belief that we could come here and get a result.That, to me, is disappointing.They tell me that there’s not many times since they’ve been back in the Premier, that they’ve got a result here. So it’s a little bit of a mental thing at the minute.
Saying that, I felt as thought we were starting to frustrate them in the first half, then they scored the wonder goal from the corner that I’m sure relaxed them. And all they needed was one more and it was gonna be an
easy day for them.”
Could you have been more positive at the start of the second half?
“Well, we were at positive at half time, thinking we were gonna get the goal back, but we lost the ball in the defensive third of the field and that’s how they then scored the second goal. That’s what you mustn’t do.The higher you play, if you lose the ball close to your goal, you’ve got a problem. And that what happened again.”
Akinbiyi and Izzet?
“Yes, it’s been them two. They’ve recently scored six goals in two games, so I can’t look at that and say it’s wrong. To me it was the ability of Arsenal and the lack of belief in ourselves that was the difference between the two teams.
Arsenal looked on a different level today. But good as they were, we were poor. Teams like ourselves, all you can do is work as hard as you can to try and get as many results as you can. And when you come up against a team like Arsenal, and when you play Man Utd, you mustn’t make it too easy for them. And I felt today we did. But I don’t wanna take anything away from them because they’ve got first class players.”
Impressed with Henry?
“Very impressed with him. I saw him play many moons ago in a Switzerland Under-21 game and I’ve been impressed with him since then.But I was impressed with all the Arsenal players today. They looked a very confident bunch. And quite rightly so.”
Arsenal lost their last game 4-0 but you’re third in the league and lost 6-1 to them. How do you account for that?
“Well, I said to the players, I’ve been full of praise for them all season.They’ve worked hard for the club and the supporters. But today they didn’t. I think they’ve had a day off today And that to me is disappointing. That’s the first time I’ve had to say that. So, again, we’ve got good characters, and we will bounce back from this. But it’s a really disappointing day. We’ve gotta look at oursleves and get back in training on Thursday morning and sort it out.”
27th December 2000.