Dein defends his ‘down to earth’ Gunners

ARSENAL vice-chairman David Dein has hit back at Alex Ferguson’s jibe that the Gunners are arrogant and over-confident about retaining the Premiership title.

Dein accepts manager Arsene Wenger's bullishness toward the championship race might make it appear that way. But while also admitting the race is far from over, Dein will continue to applaud Wenger's positive stance which reflects the Frenchman's faith in his multi-national squad.

"We are not arrogant at all," said Dein, whose club are still five points clear at the top despite United's 2-1 win over Leeds at Old Trafford.

He added: "I think we realise that it is a long, hard season and the best team will win the league. It is as simple as that.

"But, no, we are not arrogant. We might, in a certain way, be a little bit confident because of the results.

"But we know we have a lot of big games coming up and until we have won the league, until no-one can catch us, it is not over until it's over."

Dein's response comes in the wake of Ferguson's prediction that 'Arsenal can be a bit over-confident, and that is a dangerous game which can come back and kick them in the teeth'.

Most pundits believe Ferguson's main motivation for those words was to lift his own players for an uphill title battle after the disappointment of last Sunday's Worthington Cup final defeat by Liverpool.

But after beating Leeds with a late winner at Old Trafford on Wednesday, Ferguson repeated his mantra from the closing stages of the 1998 and 2002 Arsenal title triumphs when he said: "We still need Arsenal to drop points and I just hope we can make a race of it."

Gunners' England centre-half Sol Campbell has supported his chairman's line, saying: "We're not arrogant at all, far from it.

"We are a very down-to-earth bunch and that is quite special. When people say things about you it doesn't bother you when you know the truth of how you are.

"We have achieved nothing yet (this season) and so why would we start shouting that we've done this and done that? We know there is still a lot of work to be done."

Meanwhile, Wenger is likely to repeat his policy of the FA Cup fifth round win over United by resting star strikers Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp for tomorrow quarter-final against Chelsea at Highbury.

Henry has revealed how his team-mates adopted a "cruel to be kind" approach to acclimatising him to English football by kicking him in training.

He told the latest issue of GQ magazine: "I have had to work on my strength since coming to England. During training, Martin Keown would always keep hitting me all the way to the dressing-rooms.

"There were some fantastic battles between us during training. I used to get knocked aside at the start but this has helped me and now it is a different story.

"The other players used to be more vicious with me. That was because they wanted to instill the English way of playing into me. It was their way of being cruel to be kind."