The Gunners head to Old Trafford on Monday night looking to keep themselves top of the table. However, it has been four years since Arsenal beat the Red Devils on home soil, and their recent record against Chelsea does not stand up much better either.

"We know that if we win this game we will go four points ahead of Manchester United," the full-back told Arsenal TV Online.

"We will try to win the game by playing well, but at the end of the day playing well and losing the game is not giving you anything.

"Okay, it gives you credit you are a good player and you play for a good side, but at the end of the day if you can be four points ahead of the second place, that is all that matters.

"We just want to win and make our fans proud. We have been training hard every day and will show them we are up for this game."

The ex Arsenal and England captain Tony Adams is currently managing a team called Gabala in Azerbaijan, and despite a slow start to the season, they have now gone ten games without losing and are in the quarter finals of the cup. Adams intends to stay there for a while, win the league, and then take them through the Champions League qualifying rounds.

He said: “I said to them that if they put me on the same budget as the top 10, I’ll win the league. If we’re not up there near the European places next year then I’ll be doing something wrong. It will depend on my recruitment because most coaches can put a team out and do OK. If you can get 75 per cent of the decisions right on who you bring to the club, then you are a good manager.

“I’ve got the power here, which is what you don’t get in England. Over there the players have the power and CEOs and chairmen have destroyed coaching as a career with continual changes.”

“Here, I’m in a position of power and can do whatever I want. Not many in England can do that – (Sir Alex) Ferguson, Wenger, maybe (David) Moyes. Generally it is the lunatics running the asylum.”

But he feels that he is just learning so that one day he can come back to England and be Arsenal manager.
And he has no qualms about telling anyone who will listen. He said: “I’m developing these skills so I can use them at the highest level. I would probably only take one job in England – Arsenal. I need to win things.

“What can you win at Stoke, say? I don’t think I want to be manager of Wigan, no disrespect to Wigan. I’m not sure what I could win with them. It takes a certain type of man to do that. Ollie (Ian Holloway) is doing unbelievably at Blackpool but I don’t want to be Blackpool manager.”

Adams certainly is a man with a plan, and he reckons that it will take him about eight years to work his way up to the Arsenal job, but when he gets there he intends to stay there for life, literally!

He concluded: “If you want me to write a plan – and God laughs at those who make them – it would be three years here in which I build the stadium, hopefully win the league; go to Feyenoord with a new owner who will invest about £20m and wants me to win the Dutch title for the first time since 2002. I spend five years or so there, we win the Europa League, we put them back on the map and then I go to Arsenal, go to England and then I drop down dead.”

Adams had a couple of bad experiences at Portsmouth and Wigan, and is happy to be out of the spotlight for now while he quietly learns his trade. If he is a successful as he plans to be, would Arsenal fans welcome him back to the Emirates with open arms?