Arsene Wenger Wants Manchester City Excluded From Champions League

Courtesy of Flickr user Ronnie McDonald

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has continued his habit of speaking about other clubs when he made comments suggesting that Manchester City and Paris Saint Germain should be excluded from the Champions League for violating Financial Fair Play regulations. UEFA has reported that they will be imposing a significant fine on the two teams as well as squad limitations and a wage cap. UEFA president Michel Platini has said that they will not be banning the clubs from European competitions which is sensible considering how new the FFP regulations are.

Arsene Wenger is not impressed with the punishment and feels that it should be steeper for clubs that violate the rules and said, “you would think that you accept the rules and you’re in the competition or you don’t accept the rules and you’re not in the competition. Then, everybody would understand it.”

He also feels that UEFA needs to be tougher on violators and be more clear on the rules:

"“There are rules. You respect them or you don’t respect them. If you don’t respect them you have to be punished. When UEFA doesn’t want to kick the clubs out of the Champions League, they have to find a more subtle punishment.From all of us on the outside, it looks a complicated punishment, which nobody really understands. We live in a society where everyone is informed. The rules have to be clear that you can inform people well.If I go out in the street now and I ask 100 people what you think of the fair play punishment, how many do you think can explain it to you? I am in the job and I cannot do it.They have to clarify the punishment. We all agree that if we don’t respect the rules you have to be punished, but to explain to people how that works is very difficult.”"

Arsene Wenger also compared it to the economics of most capitalist countries and his comments sound more like an economics lecture at a university than a commentary on the transfer spending of other clubs:

"“There are two ways of thinking about the whole process. You can say, ‘we don’t care, we want the billionaires to buy the big players and they can spend what they want’ or you say ‘look, we want to keep things fair’. If you say to me ‘tomorrow we give everybody £100million in the 20 Premier League clubs’, I say ‘okay, I will take the gamble’, and then you can say at the start that is a fair competition.It is a bit like it works in the United States, which is the most capitalistic country, they have the more even field of competition.So it is a basic question you have to answer in England – do we let it go and everyone spends what he wants? Inflation can be too big and it can put too much pressure on the clubs who have not these resources to overpay their players.Anyway, since I am in the job, if you put 100 per cent more money in, where does the 100 per cent more money go? To the wages, not 99 per cent, but 100 per cent. That means the only effect it has is that the wages go up.”"

Wenger has always played the victim card when it comes to the spending that Arsenal does compared to other clubs in the top four of the Premier League. What he conveniently ignores is that Arsenal is a global brand with tremendous resources that can outspend most of the clubs in England but choose not to. A small club could not afford Mesut Ozil or the construction of a stadium like the Emirates but it is Arsene Wenger’s small club mentality is what is holding them back.

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