Responding with a touch of class...

Judging by the slating he’s been getting of late, it wouldn’t surprise me if a poll of the world’s most unpopular people saw Arsene Wenger up there with the likes of Ian Huntley, Ian Brady and Osama Bin Laden right now. Ashley Cole would obviously be top of the list.

From Tony Pulis to Fat Sam and Ryan Shawcross, the football world has been queuing up to have a pop at Wenger just lately.

This week, Wolves Chairman Jez Moxey waded in, bleating: “keep your mouth shut. Play the game, play aggressive, let everybody play. Wilshere and your [Wenger's] other players are going to make similar challenges [to the Wolves challenge which broke Bobby Zamora’s leg]. All he said was exactly the same as every other manager has and yet he is one of the managers who goes on the front foot, moaning and complaining and bitching about it because it is unfair on his team.”

Wenger’s retort, of course, was pure class. When asked if he had seen the comments made by Jez Moxey, he replied: “Who?”

You see it’s easy to run your mouth off and tell people to “keep your mouth shut”. It’s a little more difficult to talk about the game with the class and guile of Arsene Wenger:

On Alex Ferguson claiming Manchester United played the best football, despite Arsenal winning the league:
"Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home."

After the Arsenal fans booed a 1-1 draw with Middlesbrough in November 1998:
"If you eat caviar every day it's difficult to return to sausages."

On Jose Mourinho accusing him of being a voyeur:
"When you give success to stupid people, it makes them more stupid sometimes and not more intelligent."

On Arsenal lacking a little confidence:
"A football team is like a beautiful woman. When you do not tell her, she forgets she is beautiful."

In response to Sepp Blatter's accusation that big clubs were guilty of 'child slavery’:
"If you have a child who is a good musician, what is your first reaction? It is to put them into a good music school, not in an average one. So why should that not happen in football?"

On Sol Campbell joining Portsmouth, having been released by Arsenal because he wanted to play overseas:
"It is a big surprise to me because he cancelled his contract to go abroad. Have you sold Portsmouth to a foreign country?"

On the success of the Great Britain swimming team at the Olympics:
"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."

On Emmanuel Adebayor's stamp on Robin van Persie:
"I watched it when I got home and it looked very bad. You ask 100 people, 99 will say it's very bad and the hundredth will be Mark Hughes."

On Alex Ferguson criticising Arsenal’s disciplinary record:
"Ferguson should calm down. Maybe it would have been better if he had put us against a wall and shot us."

Upon being asked if he had received the apology that Alex Ferguson claimed he had sent to Wenger:
“No. Perhaps he sent it by horse."

On players being called up for international duty:
"What the national coaches are doing is like taking the car from the 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."

On Arsenal's recruitment of foreign players:
"If I give you a good wine, you will see how it tastes… and only after you ask where it comes from."

On buying expensive stars:
"We do not buy superstars. We make them."

On clubs selling their history:
"We try to go a different way that, for me, is respectable. Briefly, these are the basics. I thought: ‘We are building a stadium, so I will get young players in early so I do not find myself exposed on the transfer market without the money to compete with the others. I build a team, and we compensate by creating a style of play, by creating a culture at the club because the boy comes in at 16 or 17 and when they go out they have a supplement of soul, of love for the club, because they have been educated together. The people you meet at college from 16 to 20, often those are the relationships in life that keep going. That, I think, will give us strength that other clubs will not have."