Top 125 Quotes & Sayings by Arsene Wenger - Page 2

We played a whole season unbeaten but you did not see me every week jumping on the tables. Once it's over it's over and you do in the next one as well as you can. Plenty of managers who have won the Champions League will not be considered great managers.

If somebody stamps on your head in that way, you wouldn't say, 'Thank you very much, can I turn the other cheek'. Only Jesus Christ did that.

If I were going to war I would want to be alongside an Englishman not a Frenchman. The Frenchman would think too much.

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 think we live in a very competitive world, and I love competition.

What makes daily life interesting is that we try to transform it to something that is close to art.

If you want to win a horse race, you need your horse to be 100%.

Messi is a Playstation.

Their diet is basically boiled vegetables, fish and rice. No fat, no sugar. You notice when you live there that there are no fat people.

Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home.

One of the things I discovered in Japan was from watching sumo wrestling. At the end you can never tell who has won the fight, and who has lost, because they do not show their emotion because it could embarrass the loser. It is unbelievable. That is why I try to teach my team politeness. It is only here in England that everybody pokes their tongue out when they win.

I know how important it is to have a helping hand.

Nobody will finish above us in the league. It wouldn't surprise me if we were to go unbeaten for the whole of the season. The challenge now is to dominate English football for a long time.

I didn't know the English were good at swimming. I have been in this country for 12 years and I haven't seen a swimming pool.

When I first came to Arsenal, I realised the back four were all university graduates in the art of defending. As for Tony Adams, I consider him to be a doctor of defence. He is simply outstanding.

Everyone plays the ball over the top and, at the moment, we only concede goals from crosses or balls over the top. I feel we will adapt to that.

It is one of my biggest regrets that Niall Quinn was not here during my time... I felt he was an intelligent player. It would have been a good combination with Thierry Henry. What I like with Quinn is if you look at the player who played next to him, he always scored 40 goals because he had a hand for his head and he just put the ball where you were. He was a team player. A top-class player makes other players look good and he had that player.

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.

As far as I'm concerned, this guy should never play football again. The answer you normally get after a tackle like that is 'he is not the type of guy who does that.' It's like a guy who kills one time in his life - it's enough. You have a dead person. This tackle is absolutely horrendous.

Gerard Houllier's thoughts on the matter international football echo mine. He thinks that what the national coaches are doing is like taking the car from his garage without even asking permission. They will then use the car for ten days and abandon it in a field without any petrol left in the tank. We then have to recover it, but it is broken down. Then a month later they will come to take your car again, and for good measure you're expected to be nice about it.

Ferguson's out of order. He has lost all sense of reality. He is going out looking for a confrontation, then asking the person he is confronting to apologise. He's pushed the cork in a bit far this time.

My job is to give people who work hard all week something to enjoy on Saturdays and Wednesdays.

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.

The score is high and very brutal but does not reflect what we saw on the pitch. The first shot on goal was a goal. The second was an own goal. The third was straight after half-time. They defend like mad and they catch us on the break.

If you eat caviar every day it's difficult to return to sausages.

I am not against being pragmatic, because it is pragmatic to make a good pass, not a bad one. If I have the ball, what do I do with it? Could anybody argue that a bad solution like just kicking it away is pragmatic just because, sometimes, it works by accident?

Who is the Best Player in the World? Leo Messi. Who is the Best Player Ever? Leo Messi!

Spare me the articles about how nice Shawcross is because that was a horrendous tackle. People say we don't fancy the physical side of it, but this is the result. If you see a player getting injured like that, it's not acceptable.

In my job, you expect to suffer. That's why when I go to hell one day, it will be less painful for me than you, because I'm used to suffering.

What makes him special? He has a mixture of physical talent and technical ability, as well as remarkable intelligence and above all a great passion for the game.

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...

It's like you wanting to marry Miss World and she doesn't want you, what can I do about it? I can try to help you, but if she does not want to marry you what can I do?

Gerard is an open-minded and passionate man. I am the opposite: stubborn and stupid. But sometimes stupid behaviour makes you win.

You cannot play for Arsenal and give up, no matter what the score is.

Any man who concentrates his energies totally on one passion is, by definition, someone who hurts the people close to him.

What motivates me is an ideal of thinking about how football should be. And to try to get near this way of playing. And to try to improve all aspects of my personality that can help me get near this ideal way of playing football.

We have tried to get closer to them, but we never copied anybody, we always tried to play our football

In England you have a good phrase. It is 'to bring the game into disrepute.

Thierry Henry could take the ball in the middle of the park and score a goal that no one else in the world could score.

For a while, you could decide when you loan the player out whether he plays against you or not, and I always decided that he could play against us. But I must say I didn't get any protection from the media because when the player I loaned out scored against us, it's 'aaahhh, look at him, stupid...'

As a non-Arsenal player I would say Ryan Giggs is my Premier League player of the decade because he has combined style with winning. Also I feel sorry he could never attend the World Cup, somewhere where people get a lot of compliments when they do well.

Fair play is an English word. It is not a French word, and it has been copied all over the world. Unfortunately, it does not function any more here.

I believe I do my job the way I have to do it.

I am still hopeful we can go through the season unbeaten - a frightening thought.

Unfortunately apparently I am to blame because I don't produce enough English players.

If you buy a man who is half dead, everybody may be happy off the field, but on the field you'll have major problems

I don't think it's because of my eyes, my beautiful eyes. (on Henry staying at Arsenal for the money)

It's a strange atmosphere always over there, it is darker and less glamorous, and you don't feel as high. It is a different kind of test - can you raise your level in a less exciting environment and perhaps still a very difficult one?

Sometimes now, when I watch continental games on television, I'm a bit bored. I ask, 'where is the intensity?'

I would be much more annoyed if we hadn't won the game. As a manager, you have to see the positives and I think Pires has a vaccine for the rest of his life.

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

If I left I would feel a deserter - like the guy who walks away from the army once there is a war. I am highly committed to this club. I love what I do here and love the spirit of the team.

Everybody has a different opinion in this league and nobody is a prophet. I personally don't know who will win the league. I managed 1,600 games so, if Nani knows, he must be 1,600 times more intelligent than I am.

I am supposed to take the bullets and absorb them. Like a bear, a polar bear.

If you don't question the officials' role then you've got to ask what they are doing

You ask me: 'Was he a fair player?' I say: 'No, I'm sorry, for me he was not a fair player.' I just think I respect him highly as a quality player. I did not like some things he did on the football pitch and I have the right to say that. It's not because you are older, suddenly, that you are a saint.

If I give you a good wine, you will see how it tastes and after you ask where it comes from.

I have only been here since 1996 but between 1966 and 1996 England had thirty years without foreign players and didn't win any more competitions in that time.

I'm French. I have not become an Englishman. I have the impression of living on an island called Arsenal. If you fancy a sightseeing tour of London, don't ask me. You would get lost.

Messi's like a PlayStation. He can take advantage of every mistake we make. He made the impossible possible. He has something exceptional. He has six or seven years in front of him, touchwood that nothing happens to him, and he can reach unbelievable levels.