Arsenal mastermind Arsene Wenger often appears calm and in control, unless his meticulously constructed team are beaten. The Frenchman’s hatred of losing often tempts him into rash statements – like accusing Ruud van Nistelrooy of being a cheat – and and obviously extends to outside the football pitch too.

Over the past few days the press have been rubbing their hands with glee at the crisis at Arsenal, and every day yet another player is tipped to leave. Wenger hit out at news of Mathieu Flamini’s move to AC Milan with typical vitriol, saying: "I know the rules in this job, the guy [Flamini] is free, he can go to somebody who pays him more, but he said he wanted to stay. If you say 'no, I want to go somewhere' that is OK. But you cannot say 'I want to stay but I go.'

"This club here has a history of being built by people of values. I'm not sure that in the history of Milan you'll find the same values, even if you dig well."

'In accusing the two Milanese clubs of a lack of class, Wenger is forgetting what has happened at his club from the beginning of the 20th century with the Del-Boy dealings of Norris and his own ''disrespectful'' pursuit of two of Barcelona’s youngest talents'


Wenger has again let anger cloud his judgement, and his attack on AC Milan was a cheap one. In any case, Arsenal’s image as a genteel and historic club isn’t entirely true.

If you look at the club and “dig well”, as Wenger put it, you come up with a catalogue of prickly issues. Probably the most controversial and well-known of them is how Henry Norris ran the club, engineering a ground move (and you just have to look at the opprobrium levelled at MK Dons for doing the same thing) from Woolwich to north London – as well as contorting through loopholes and somehow ensuring that Arsenal, the fifth-placed finishers, were promoted rather than Tottenham.

Of course, in 1925 Herbert Chapman came in, bringing major success and adding historic lustre, and chairman Norris was banned from football by the FA for murky financial irregularities. Not too much digging is needed to know that.

Move forward to the present day and you’ll see that Arsenal themselves have been known to dabble in transfer dark arts – gobbling up both Cesc Fabregas and Fran Merida from Barcelona, and exploiting the fact that at the time English clubs could sign 16-year-olds on professional terms whereas Spanish clubs had to wait an extra two years.

Arsene has also signalled that he may want to play ‘hard-ball’ with Alex Hleb after the Belarusian announced that he was going to buy out the remaining two years of his contract and saunter off to Inter Milan under the ‘Webster clause’. Wenger will challenge this clause and has publicly criticised Inter for being ‘disrespectful’ in their pursuit of Hleb.

In accusing the two Milanese clubs of a lack of class, Wenger is forgetting what has happened at his club from the beginning of the 20th century with the Del-Boy dealings of Norris and his own ‘disrespectful’ pursuit of two of Barcelona’s youngest talents. In fact, the pilfering of Hleb and Flamini could be karmic come-uppance for Arsenal.