Arsene Wenger isn’t a bad guy.
His philosophy might be too romantic nowadays, he might not have aged too well as a manager of one of the biggest clubs in Europe, and he might be easy pickings for criticism every single year, but he still talks a great game and he still holds his class through it all.
After Alexis Sanchez joined Manchester United a week before the transfer window closed, and gave the media nothing left to really report or speculate on, press rooms all over these isles were champing at the bit when news broke that the Chilean had missed a drugs test.
In his pre-match match press conference – ahead of Tuesday’s game with Swansea – Arsene Wenger admitted that it was Arsenal’s responsibility to see Sanchez to his drugs test but he is confident that they have nothing to hide.
“On Monday, there was a lot going on and it was a special day for Alexis Sanchez because he had to do paperwork, he had to travel and is he still our player on Monday or not, you don’t know with negotiations going on,” Wenger explained.
“I think it’s a special event for him to miss a drugs test because he was certainly somewhere else with his agent and overall he has been tested so many times here that it is no worry for me that he has any doping problem. It’s just a bad day for him to be tested.
“Honestly, on the administration side certainly it would still be our responsibility because on the day he had not moved, so maybe this will be down to us and our responsibility. “
The manager went further and revealed that it happened before.
“I don’t know what really happened but usually we always try on request to get our players available and always co-ordinate well. I don’t know what really happened, I’ll have to check that,” he said.
“It doesn’t happen a lot,” he added. ”It happened with us with [Cesc] Fabregas who went to Spain for treatment and we lost contact in Spain and they couldn’t find him because he was at the doctor’s office, so sometimes it can be difficult to locate the player at the right moment, but although there is a number of controls that we have, it doesn’t happen a lot.
“I’m quite relaxed because we have nothing to hide, and we always try our best to cooperate with doping control.”
