Arsene Wenger believes that some of his key players were “tapped up” before their 4-0 thrashing at the hands of Liverpool last month, and has called for the transfer window to be shortened.
It has been a hard couple of weeks for the Arsenal boss. A couple of bad results and a few players wanting out of the club is a hard pill for anyone to swallow, but you get the sense that Wenger is probably one of the best in the game at managing to do so – he will almost certainly bounce back.
Fans and pundits alike have challenged Wenger’s knowledge of late, and despite calls for his head, the Frenchman has stood firm and will look to put the past behind him this weekend against Bournemouth.
Wenger was humiliated in his last game by Liverpool, and says that he is not naive enough to believe ‘tapping up’ does not go on in football. The Frenchman is in favour of shaking up the transfer window, making the deadline for transfers come before the start of the season. As well as the agreed shortening of the summer transfer window, he also wants the January transfer window scrapped.
Asked if some of his players had been tapped up before the Liverpool defeat, Wenger 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 is also an advocate of Financial Fair Play – something that has been put under huge scrutiny of late. Wenger now believes that the rules of FFP now mean next to nothing.
“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.”
[Quotes via Telegraph]