Arsène Wenger has issued a warning about the impact of excessive drinking for elite footballers, suggesting that it is significant enough to compromise a player’s position in the team. “At the top level every player has to know what he can do and what he cannot do,” he said. “There is a lot of competition inside the club and if you don’t compete, you don’t play.”
Wenger was at the vanguard when it came to limiting alcohol intake in English football when he arrived at Arsenal in the mid-1990s. A drinking culture was pervasive throughout the game then and Wenger wasted little time in forbidding alcohol around the club and trying to educate his players about the effects it can have for high-performance athletes. “We don’t serve any alcohol at the club,” he said on Thursday. “Tony Adams came out and said he wanted to change. It was the right period to stop serving alcohol.”
The decision to turn the players’ lounge into a dry bar and to banish alcoholic drinks from the team coach coincided with the era that Adams, then the club captain, admitted to his struggle with alcoholism. While Wenger does not set firm rules on how players choose to spend their free time, he allows them to self‑police their behaviour and expects them to keep reasonable restraint. “You have to accept you cannot control the players everywhere,” he says. “I don’t think it is a major problem now in English sport.”
Wenger was reluctant to get too involved in the details of Wayne Rooney’s escapades last week. It was probably wise not to gee up a player who has enjoyed regular success against his team over the years. Besides, the Arsenal manager has enough considerations preparing his squad for an important and challenging game on Saturday at Old Trafford.
The two most obvious decisions are how he covers for the absence of Héctor Bellerín and how much – if any – game time he can allow Alexis Sánchez on his return from international duty having played with a hamstring worry.
Wenger watched a recording of the Chile-Uruguay game, during which Sánchez scored twice, on Thursday. Unusually for a man who spends so much time watching televised football from around the world he missed the live broadcast. “I fell asleep,” he said.
In fairness, it took place in the early hours of Wednesday morning UK time. Sánchez returned at 4pm on Thursday – less than 48 hours before the lunchtime kick‑off at Manchester United. Watching the video will inform Wenger’s decision about whether or not to play Sánchez.
“I know him so well, like all my players that I observe every day, so I will be able to see if he was playing with a restriction or not. But the first goal he scored he ran from the halfway line and resisted two defenders – if you are really injured with a hamstring you cannot do that. It is a very difficult one because I am sure he will come back saying he is all right.”
Bellerín is out for four weeks after an ankle problem sustained in a challenge from Danny Rose in the last 10 seconds of the draw against Tottenham Hotspur last time out in the Premier League. “It was a bad one,” Wenger said. “Did Rose want to injure Bellerín? I don’t think so. He just went in for the tackle. But it’s annoying to lose Bellerín, that’s for sure.” There is no straightforward alternative who is fully fit at the moment.
Wenger, however, is keyed up to get these decisions right. “We go into a period of big games, one after another. The way we deal with these kinds of games will be very important to our position in the league and our ambitions.”
