No love lost between Wenger and Liverpool

How do you react to one of your rivals losing their star player in a transfer window? What would be your reaction if the same team loses two best players in two successive summers? Whatever it may be, the Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has no sympathy at all.

Wenger was talking about the loss to Liverpool over two successive summers. Luis Suarez was their talisman player before making a big-money move to Barcelona. Raheem Sterling carried the mantle last year before moving to Manchester City early in this transfer window.

Interestingly, both the players have been linked with Arsenal and Wenger even lodged an official bid for Suarez. Not going into the saga that dragged a whole transfer window, it looks like the Frenchman has moved on.

Wenger knows and understands the monumental job at hand for his managerial counterpart – Brendan Rodgers. The task of rebuilding the side after losing the mercurial forwards is tough for any manager but Wenger is not concerned about that.

“Liverpool can make their own decisions. They refused to sell us Suarez, so I cannot feel too much sympathy for them.”

Wenger saw his £40 million plus £1 bid for the Uruguay striker hit the headlines for all wrong reasons in August 2013. The extra pound infuriated the Merseyside club so much that they flatly refused to sell the striker to Arsenal.

The Gunners’ boss has been looking for a striker to lead the line for his team – for many seasons now. Though he refuses to acknowledge it the quality of strikers at his disposal is still in the gray scale.

Liverpool have addressed their striker problems by signing the Belgian striker Christian Benteke from Aston Villa. Wenger has been linked with many strikers throughout the transfer window. Not least among the linked strikers is the Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema.

The challenge ahead on Monday night for his team would be to tackle the threat of Benteke. The striker is a menace, especially since he is strong in the air and also can bring other players into the game.

Wenger should know the seriousness of the task for Rodgers since he himself had to endure the tough task of rebuilding many times. When Arsenal lost Thierry Henry to Barcelona and Robin van Persie to Manchester United, they may have been nearing the end of their prime but they were still leaders of the pack.

Sridhar

Tags Rodgers Sterling Suarez

22 Comments

    1. A bit off topic, this is about match schedule comparing between City and Arsenal, assuming that:
      – City reaches Champions League quater final while Arsenal doesn’t
      – both City and Arsenal reaches FA Cup semi final, not against each other

      12 April 2016: City plays Champions League QF, while Arsenal rests
      16 April 2016: City vs Chelsea (away), Arsenal vs Crystal Palace (home)
      23 April 2016: both City and Arsenal play FA Cup semi final (rescheduled games: City vs Stoke City, Arsenal vs Sunderland)
      30 April 2016: City vs Southampton (away), Arsenal vs Norwich (home)
      3 May 2016, delayed games: City vs Stoke City (home), Arsenal vs Sunderland (away)
      7 May 2016: City vs Arsenal (Etihad stadium)
      15 May 2016: City vs Swansea (away), Arsenal vs Aston Villa (home)

      I think we have some advantage over City, provided they are not far ahead of us?

  1. Ok…. So wow.
    The Suarez transfer bid is still up for debate??
    It was a clause in his contract!! Do people honestly believe that extra pound had no significance!?!?!?

  2. The problem with articles like this one and the many other articles that this website has started churning out is that it doesn’t mention the fact that arsenal were under huge financial pressure during that period and the players (Henry, Fabregas, Van Persie) did not believe that a club with no money could compete. We had to do with sub-par replacements (Chamakh etc) and although they weren’t as good Arsene was able to keep us in the top four and earning money worthy of champions league contenders (albeit while making an extra couple playoff matches revenue). I will always be grateful to those players for the job that they did. Fast forward a few years and our stadium has been fully paid off, we have made three-four world class signings (nobody knows notices because it was such a steal from a struggling Malaga side but Santi was the beginning of the inflow followed by Özil, Sanchez and now Cech) and won a few throphies on the way. Our situation cannot be compared to a half decent Liverpool team who spend hundreds of millions of pounds and still only produce three world class players every decade. This Liverpool team looks half baked and I expect our stars to expose them tonight with a silky display in our beautiful, modern, paid-with-money-we-made, back-to-back award winning (Best pitch for both the 2013/14 & 2014/15 season) Emirates stadium.
    Ever ask me what Arsene has done for our club and my reply is simply that he stayed when he could go to Monaco, PSG, or Madrid and be given the type of budgets that would feed a small African nation. When our team has a bad game they say the fans bitch and cry for a new manager. Some even went as far as saying that Brendan was the man to bring us the league and unfair throphies. If that was the case why haven’t they done so even though they’ve spent almost £200 million in the last two years alone? Özil came to us because of our world class, and consistent manager and people have the nerve to insult his quality and brand him a panic buy. How many clubs can panic buy Özil during a period where his value to his club was at least £53-£60 million for the price of £42.5 million?
    I didn’t plan on ranting but I’m sick of the way some fans treat the players that you (no one is forcing you) pay the highest ticket prices in Europe to go watch, and the manager that made our beautiful football an international brand.

  3. Lets hope Arsenal can avoid matching another infamous statistic tonight, namely:

    “Arsenal could lose their opening two home matches of a top-flight campaign for only the third time, after 1908-09 and 1949-50.”

    We have had too many of those type of bad stats in recent seasons 🙁

  4. Well Mr Wenger, no manager felt pity for you too when u sold Clichy, Nasri, Fabregas & RVP…so plss face ya team and bless it with the naked problem pulling it down for years.

    1. I think you didnt gt why he ssaid he had no sympathy…
      IMO a fan stands by his team in these situations in a match day..
      but hey..its a free world

  5. Giroud is slightly better than Benteke in my opinion. If we don’t get another CF then I believe Giroud will score more goals than Benteke.

    The stats are in Giroud’s favour slightly

  6. The extra pound of an offfer in Business is a sign of the offer not to be confused by any interptetation of “the offer had to be ‘over´ 40”.
    it is common in Business.
    Liverpool simply didnt respect their own rule.
    And Suarez apparently didnt want to join us.
    So, fk them both.
    On this one I stand by Arsenal, Wenger and the ngotition team

  7. No wonder Wenger has no sympathy, given what he’s had to put up with. In the space of one year he lost: Fabregas, Clichy, Nasri, Van Persie and Song. That’s five of his starting line-up gone…in one year!

    As much as I can’t stand Wenger any more, that must have been tough seeing his team ripped apart in such a short space of time.

  8. Please don’t get me wrong, but I think it was stupid of Wenger to add just one pound. It could be seen as an insult. What’s that? Why not just leave it at 40 or go back later and make it 45? “LOOK”, if we had made it 45, I’m sure they’d have accepted, even 42 (most likely). Sometimes he thinks he’s smart, then he signs an injured Kim on deadline day.

    1. what?? why??
      if it activated the clause what does it matter? they were the ones who chose to kick up a stink and make the bid public. we’re not the ones who put a clause in his contract and then failed to respect it. the whole thing was just ridiculous. Rodgers again showing his lack of class

    2. @kick ass
      It is a common thing in commercial offers.
      I have seen a lot of checks like that and believeme, no Business man worthy of that title has ever been insulted by it…unless they want to have an excuse not to proceed

  9. Emanuele Giulianelli ‏@emagiulianeli 59 Min.Vor 59 Minuten Übersetzung anzeigen
    IMPORTANT NEWS: I can not live this lie anymore. I am sorry Arsenal fans. Benzema is not coming to Arsenal. #Arsenal

  10. Alexis ‏@Alexisdun85 3 Std.Vor 3 Stunden Übersetzung anzeigen
    I apologize to all the public, the twets on Benzema was not me, I hacked .

    THIS GUY IS JOKE

  11. John Henry(Liverpool owner on Luis Suarez release clause)
    Luis Suarez is the top scorer in the English Premier League, which is arguably the top soccer league in the world,” Henry is reported to have said. “He had a buyout clause of £40m. Arsenal, one of our prime rivals, offered £40m plus £1. What we’ve found … is that contracts don’t seem to mean a lot in England – actually, in world football.

    “It doesn’t matter how long a player’s contract is, he can decide he’s leaving. We sold a player, Fernando Torres, for £50m, that we did not want to sell, we were forced to.

    “Since apparently these contracts don’t seem to hold, we took the position that we’re just not selling.

    And they all thought Wenger is mad?

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