Arsene Wenger best quotes

 

Image taken by Stuart MacFarlane

•  "Everybody has a different opinion in this league and nobody is a prophet, we live a society where everybody knows everything and it looks like it is a shame to say I don’t know.”

• "I personally don’t know who will win the league. I have managed 1,600 games so if Nani knows he must be 1,600 times more intelligent than I am.”

•  "If you do not believe you can do it then you have no chance at all."
   

•  "Nobody has enough talent to live on talent alone. Even when you have talent, a life without work goes nowhere."

•  "I did not see the incident."
   

•  “Is the title over or not? I don't believe so. If everyone is right about the championship, then let's stop, give them the trophy and then start again.”

 

•  [Upon being asked what he does with his spare time] "I watch football."

 

• "We do not buy superstars. We make them."

 

• "I am in a job where you always look in front of you. Unfortunately, the older you get, the less distance there is in front of you."

 

• "If I go into a season and I say, 'For f***'s sake, if we don't win anything, they will all leave,' I have already lost. The problem of the media is always to imagine the worst. The problem of the manager is always to imagine the best."

 

•  [After the Arsenal fans booed a 1-1 draw with Middlesbrough in November 1998] "If you eat caviar every day it's difficult to return to sausages."

 

• [Upon being asked if he had received the apology that Sir Alex had announced he had sent to Wenger] "No. Perhaps he sent it by horse."

 

• [On losing the lead of the league in November 2004] "It's like a child who is used to having ice cream whenever he wants. When it doesn't come when he asks he tends to get confused and nervous."

 

• [On Arsenal's recruitment policy] "If I give you a good wine, you will see how it tastes and after you ask where it comes from."

 

• "If you have a child who is a good musician, what is your first reaction? It is to put [them] into a good music school, not in an average one. So why should that not happen in football?" - September 2009, in response to Uefa president Michel Platini and Fifa president Sepp Blatter's respective claims that the top clubs' pursuit of young players was akin to "child slavery" and "child trafficking".

 

• "A football team is like a beautiful woman. When you do not tell her, she forgets she is beautiful."

 

• [In response to Sir Alex Ferguson's claim that he possessed the best team in the league despite Arsenal winning the title in 2002] "Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home."

 

• [After Jose Reyes announced he wanted to leave Arsenal] "It's like you wanting to marry Miss World and she doesn't want you. I can try to help you but if she does not want to marry you what can I do?"

 

• [On Emmanuel Adebayor's stamp on Robin van Persie] "I watched it when I got home and it looked very bad. You ask 100 people, 99 will say it's very bad and the hundredth will be Mark Hughes."

 

• [On Jose Mourinho after the then Chelsea boss accused him of being a voyeur] "He's out of order, disconnected with reality and disrespectful. When you give success to stupid people, it makes them more stupid sometimes and not more intelligent."

 

• "I tried to watch the Tottenham match on television in my hotel yesterday, but I fell asleep."

 

• [In 2003] "It's not impossible. I know it will be difficult for us to go through the season unbeaten. But if we keep the right attitude it's possible we can do it."

 

• "I am not scared to spend money. If you go out with me one night, you will understand that."

 

• "Sometimes I see it (a foul by an Arsenal player), but I say that I didn't see it to protect the players and because I could not find any rational explanation for what they did."

 

• "I cannot classify the moments of happiness and of sadness, but every defeat is a scar in your heart that you never forget."

 

•  "It is a big surprise to me because he cancelled his contract to go abroad. Have you sold Portsmouth to a foreign country?

 

• “No, no, I want to lose it and I want to lose the game tomorrow so you can all be happy”

 

• “I have been accused of not taking the FA Cup seriously on Saturday. I have won the FA Cup four times. Who has won it more? Give me one name.”