cind vei primi ban

Arsene Wenger believes that the years of building his young Arsenal team into a force to be reckoned with in Europe are now over, and they are ready to take on the best and start winning trophies.

“Of course I want to win trophies.” he said. “Our hopes for the season are always the same: we are fighting for the Premier League title and want to win the Champions League,”

“The plan is to continue our improvement with the strength of our team and their youth.

“My players don’t have the excuse of inexperience any more. They are eager for titles. I believe they are capable, but they have to show it.”

“People are always saying that we haven’t won anything for five years. This is true, but we have always remained at the highest level, even during difficult periods in the club’s life.

“Arsenal built a new stadium and we have to pay for that, while also building a new team which had reached the end of a cycle. What would you say to Manchester City if they did not win any trophies this season after investing £200 million?

“To me, the main reason we have not won anything in five years is the fact we play in the best league in the world against clubs that have unlimited funds.”

He also said that he is intending to carry on working in football as long as his health allows him to. Whether it is at Arsenal or in France. He mentioned a couple of places in his native land that he would like to finish his career.

“I will coach for as long as I am healthy enough,” he said. “I could finish coaching young players, but not necessarily at professional level. I am planning to remain with Arsenal until the end of my new contract, but at my age I am forced to consider the short term.

“If I am still here it will not be because of a lack of offers from clubs overseas, but because I really appreciate what I have been given here. I am fortunate to work with complete freedom.”

“In France, there is the club who are close to my heart, Strasbourg,” he continued. “Also there is a club with huge undeveloped potential, PSG.

“Am I tempted by Paris’ challenge? I don’t know. So far, not at all. At the moment, PSG does not have the means which matches the size of the city.”

That is very rare open interview with Wenger. Maybe he is getting soft in his old age……

Tomas Rosicky has revealed that Arsène Wenger is desperate for silverware this season, after the manager played an uncharacteristically strong lineup in the Carling Cup last night.

Wenger is known for using the League Cup as an opportunity to test out his most exciting young players in competitive games, and while the Frenchman rotated again last night, some big names came off the bench to help the Gunners to a 4-1 win over arch rivals Tottenham.

Rosicky was one big player, captaining the side on the night, and the Czech midfielder says Wenger will be taking the Cups more seriously this season as he looks to end the club's five year wait for a trophy.

He said: "It is important to end the trophy drought because we haven't won anything for a long time. You can see the boss is going for it.

"He wants to win the Carling Cup more this season because he took the whole team here. That gives us a better chance of winning it — we have a good enough squad to compete on all levels."

Rosicky, 29, added that it would be of great personal significance for him to finally win a trophy with Arsenal, after a difficult five years at the club.

He added: "I came in 2006 and have won nothing yet. I came here to win trophies, so let's go for it in style.

"I was happy I was playing because a game against Tottenham is a great one to play in. Maybe I was a bit surprised that the whole team came here even though he rotated a little bit. But all the players who played in the starting XI last night showed that they are ready and want to play."

I was so enthused last night I went to bed extra late, couldn’t get to sleep, and then woke up late (thank goodness, not getting a full night’s sleep is not good when you get to a Certain Age – as we Veterans call it) and have hardly got time to write anything.

But here’s a few snips from Arry B. Envelope, manager of the Very Tiny Totts.  They are all taken from Sky’s very brief interview with him last night after the game.  And how strange, the national media don’t seem to be quoting them much.  But then when your middle name is “Brown” you get that.

—

“I had so many players who had not played at this level before, and Sandro had cramp so there were three or four of them who were going to struggle in extra time but we just didn’t want extra time and that first penalty did it for us.”

—–

“The young players can learn more here than they do in reserve games… The first penalty wasn’t a penalty it was a dive.”

—-

There was also a bit of commentary by Sky about this being Arsenal’s reserve team, but they got that wrong.  Our reserve team is what you see on the pitch in EPL and Champs League games, match after match because all the big boys are injured.  What you saw last night was a little bit of the first team, a bit of the reserves, and then some newcomers like Lansbury, who I thought really did his stuff, considering how new he is to all this.  It showed that the quality we saw at the end of last season was really a sign of what is to come.

So what else did we discover?  Here’s ten pointers.

1: Nasri can talk absolutely perfect English.  OK the accent is French, of course it is, but the grammar, vocabulary and pure construction of his language is perfection.  Upon retirement he will set up a series of language schools to help players who were born in the UK

2: Jack has a little way to go on this front, but with a display like that, who cares?

3: No one outside of Untold’s wonderful commentators who read every word of our post-match report seemed to want to talk about the fact that the Totts committed 23 fouls last night.  (Figure from the Guardian this morning).

4: We had almost three times as many shots on target as they did.

5: The last time we did this must have been when Liam Brady scored that goal from eight miles out on the left which bent inwards in the last microsecond, and then he turned to the Shelf  and trotted along in that ungainly way that he had with his arms out stretched looking at the Tott supporters who were frothing at the mouth.  We won 5-1 that time, and it was a great moment to be at the dirty end of the Seven Sisters.

6: Arry B. Envelope really just can’t take it, but he’ll always be the TV favourite, even after the court case, of which of course I have no prior knowledge and would never like to suggest there was anything in the brown envelope.

7: Glen Hoddle has mellowed a bit, but Ian Wright is as changeable as the wind.

8: There is no point 8.

9: Gloating is a perfectly good and normal reaction, and should be indulged in without any feelings that maybe there is a commandment somewhere that says you shouldn’t.

10: Jack is the greatest home grown talent we have ever had.