FA PREMIER LEAGUE NEWS:ARSENE WENGER has accepted that he risked pushing Arsenal towards crisis by dressing down his players at half-time against Liverpool with the ultimate football insult.
The manager told them that they were “not fit to wear the shirt” after their first-half performance at Anfield on Sunday, when they might have trailed by more than the one goal. They rallied, though, to win 2-1 and they will travel with optimism to Burnley tonight, for what Wenger has described as the sort of fixture Premier League champions must win.
“Of course it can always go the other way and you can lose 6-1,” he said of the risks associated with a half-time rollicking. “Then it’s a crisis; it is like that. We live on a volcano.”
Those who know Wenger best have suggested that the only time he has been as angry during a half-time interval was in February 2001 at Manchester United, and trailing 5-1. They would go on to lose the match 6-1. “I lose it in the big games,” Wenger said, with a smile.
The Frenchman, however, feels that it is impossible to measure the impact of a manager’s words or actions at the interval. “Maybe if I had not said a word we would have won the game as well,” he said. “Sometimes the emotional side overtakes the rational but you cannot live only with the emotional. You have to be rational most of the time.
“I was many times very angry but you do not always show it. The problem with anger is that you can create damage that you cannot repair. And, even if it is not damage, other people make you feel you have created damage.
“For example, the Phil Brown incident with his Hull players [when, last December, he kept them on the field at Manchester City for his half-time team talk]. Did that create their blip afterwards? Nobody knows. It was judged as bad . . . maybe it was good.”
It was put to Wenger that the “not fit to wear the shirt” criticism was the gravest in the English game. “I know,” he replied. “I do not want to come back on what I said. I want to keep that quiet.”
Arsenal have been boosted by the availability of Andrey Arshavin for the game at Turf Moor, where Burnley beat Wenger’s second-string side in the League Cup quarter-final last season and have impressed in the Premier League so far, taking 17 points from the available 24. Arsenal did win there in the FA Cup third-round in January 2008, however.
“Yesterday Arshavin was out, today he is in,” said Wenger of the Anfield match-winner who injured a foot late in the game. “It’s as miraculous as that.
“If you want to win the league, you must go there and win,” Wenger added. “I always say, on a Wednesday night, you go to Sheffield United or Sheffield Wednesday or Burnley, can you win the game? That’s what it is about in the Premier League.”
Wenger, meanwhile, has written to Johan Cruyff to inform him that Cesc Fabregas will not play for the Catalonia XI in a charity match against Argentina on December 22nd.
“Everybody is understandable,” said Wenger, who is not obliged to release Fabregas as Catalonia are not recognised by Fifa. “I understand that Catalonia want Cesc, I understand that Cesc wants [to play for] Catalonia and I understand deeply that Arsenal cannot release Cesc. Cesc understands that, too.”
