Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has taken a jibe at Chelsea’s current situation regarding Diego Costa.
The Gunners boss was asked about Alexis Sanchez’s attitude to being substituted during the weekend’s 4-0 win over Swansea, where he did his signature sulking to the decision to remove him from the pitch.
Alexis is known to want to play every second of every match, but was a late substitute by Wenger in minute 79 in order to give Danny Welbeck some game time.
On the subject, Wenger chose to differentiate his problems with the Chilean with that of Chelsea’s Costa, sniping at the supposed speculation.
He said: “I’d rather have someone who always wants to be involved than someone who doesn’t want to play.
“I have enough problems —I don’t need a Costa problem on top of that.
“Alexis is a guy who wants to fight everywhere, sometimes where he shouldn’t. But that is a part of his game. All my players want to play for every minute but for me this is not a story.”
The rumours around the Spain international are that he has been offered a huge £30 Million per-year contract to make the switch to China, which has prompted Costa’s head to be turned.
The drama then continued as Chelsea coach Antonio Conte and his star-striker had a difference of opinion in training, which supposedly ended with the Italian telling Costa to ‘go to China’.
The Alexis situation’s only link is in the shape of contract demands, with both players said to be demanding pay-rises, although the Chelsea man has two and a half years on his current deal.
Should we fear a Chinese offer to derail our South-American star?
Pat J
In my opinion there nothing to this, a non story. Typical media eager to single out Wenger and Arsenal, typical Wenger to deflect question by mentioning another club that is irrelevant to question posed to him.
Media baits Wenger and he bites for umpteenth time.
Sell Debuchy, Mert, and Shez then shift their wages to Sanchez. Only problem is Wenger ain’t paying a player a higher salary than his.
If I’m wrong about player salary vs Wenger salary than I will apologize for my mistake. However seems to me wage structure built around players never making more than Wenger
You’re very right from my understanding that Wenger earns more than any player, in a way I think that should be the case, no player bigger than the club etc etc however it also is unrealistic in modern football and that is in a nut shell the problem with Wenger and the owner/board. They charge Arsenal fans a shed load of money for the privilege to watch our team (which an awful lot of us did before Wenger came and Stan bought it) and take alot of that money for their own gain in one way or another. Welcome to the modern Arsenal where we pay 2017 prices to pay our best players 2012 money.
One manager is about to win the league and another one is busy talking nonsense in something he is totally unconcerned with.
It is why this other manager is described as a specialist in failure
@ramtart
About to win the league and actually winning it, are 2 different situations dude. Wait until the last whistle is blown, in the last match of the season, before you start with your “haterade” celebrations…
I laugh at such comments.
Waiting for the last whistle lol?
Haven’t you realised there is no hope yet?
Haven’t you suffered enough shame?
Well alright lets wait for the final whistle.
We are all dying to hear it
@ramtart
I laugh at guys like you who think they know it all. But don’t know JACK…Talk about suffering…
And you know what? None of us know what goes through Wengers mind when he mentions other teams or players, my guess is that he does it to deflect any criticism away from him and his team. He once said cesc would stay, that nasri would stay, rvp was staying….. Alexis will be off in that case. I’m sick of Wenger and these comments, all I want him to do is manage an Arsenal team that wins or at least challenges for the league again not give a talk on the problems of Chelski and lack of a break over Christmas, surely he’s used to the fixtures in this country after twenty years….. Heard it all before.
You’d think you never came across managers trying to get under another managers skin before. Now I can’t be certain that’s what he intended, he could just be totally being honest. I actually thought that was a very intelligent and precise interview he gave, remember, there’s questions coming at him. I think Wenger would be called a fool if he didn’t try and unsettle Chelsea’s rhythm by bringing as much focus to this Costa thing that possibly he can. These same reporters are going to be bringing up what other managers say about Costa situation, in the papers and to Conte. It’s stuff that Conte already doesn’t want to be dealing with, but now on top of keeping Chelsea ticking over, he has to deal with Costa, he has to shoot down reporters. This is exactly why other managers try to get involved in matters of other clubs.
“I have enough problems —I don’t need a Costa problem on top of that.” I don’t think any reporter asked hm about Costa, he just likes talking about other teams when trying to diverge attention from his own nose coz he’s so good in doing that, he hates being criticized, at Arsenal he is God, why would anyone criticize him?
Even more reason to pay Alexis what he wants and get him to sign a new contract.
He works hard, always gives quality performance and wants to play every match. We need more players with his mentality
Love Alexis
Wenger makes a good point – any manager would rather have players get angry about not playing every minute of every game rather than get angry and refuse to play – but I wish he had left the specifics out. No need to mention Costa by name. Makes him an easy mark for anyone trying to write a certain narrative (good example of that a few comments above). And besides, chances are we are going to be there soon, if not with Sanchez than someone else.
Completely off- topic but it would be good to see an article on Chambers. The Times had him as player of the game yesterday versus Watford and Middlesbrough has one of the best defensive records in the league with Chambers at the middle of it. I haven’t seen much of them this year so would be interested if anyone has – how much progress has Chambers made?
Yet Conte is the one about to accomplish something Wenger hasn’t done in over a decade. hmmm…
you know it’s Wenger when he tries to talk about other teams problems to explain his failures at something.. always excuses, and may be excuses are gonna land us the EPL and UCL effortlessly