‘When a striker went past me, I didn’t care’

ARSENAL defender Bacary Sagna was dropped last month as he was struggling to cope with the two-year anniversary of the death of his brother.

The French right-back, now back in the first team and set to start in this evening’s Premier League game at Stoke City, has revealed that sessions with Arsenal’s club psychologist have helped him come to terms with his loss but he still loses concentration as the tragedy continues to haunt him.

“I was not myself any more on the pitch. I had big concentration problems,” said Sagna in a moving interview out today in France’s L’Equipe magazine.

“At the start, I thought that I had accepted his death. But I hadn’t and I started falling ill regularly.

“The club psychologist came to see me before an away game and asked if I was okay. I said yes, and he answered: ‘I am not sure, your eyes are empty’. He was right. I wasn’t there. Sometimes, I would get back home after training and not even remember the road I had taken. In matches, it was the same. I was seeing the ball in slow motion. I was thinking, thinking.”

Sagna was left out of Arsenal’s recent win over Liverpool last month as it coincided with the anniversary of the death of Omar, who was 28 when he was found dead in his bath following a seizure.

“Before the game against Liverpool at home, which was around February 10, the psychologist said to me: ‘I know it’s a difficult time for you’. I had tears in my eyes. I was on the bench for that game, and there was certainly a link.”

But now the defender feels he is over the worst of it and is working hard on improving his game to help Arsenal in the title and Champions League run-in and cement his place in the France team at the World Cup too.

“I want to be the best again,” he said. “Now, I do even more in training, I do extra work on my crosses, which I had never really worked on before. I practise crossing with both feet.”

It was on an away trip with the French national team before the World Cup qualification match in Serbia, when Sagna told his team-mates and coach about the torment he had been suffering on the pitch. And it was only then that he felt he could move forward and improve his game.

“Things fell into place on that away trip with France in Serbia last September,” he explained. “On the plane, the coach [Raymond Domenech] came to talk to me. And I let everything out. I was with Gallas, Diaby and Clichy and I told him about those moments when I didn’t care. I told him I didn’t understand why I was feeling like this. When a striker went past me, I couldn’t care. But now, if a striker goes past me, well, he doesn’t get past me now!”

Arsenal have come unstuck in their only two visits to the Britannia Stadium, losing 3-1 in this season’s FA Cup and 2-1 in the league last term, with Rory Delap’s missiles from the touchline causing massive damage in both matches.

But Wenger believes Stoke have improved as a footballing outfit during their second season back in the top flight and have more strings to their bow, despite statistics showing otherwise.

“Stoke have scored 15 goals from set-pieces, 14 of them at home,” noted Wenger, whose team are third in the league heading into the weekend, six points adrift of leaders Chelsea.

“Of those 14, a big part is down to their long throw-ins but they are a team that plays football as well. I have seen them recently in games and they have a good mixture in their play. Stoke are a good football-playing team. We’ll have to beat them on the ground and play at a good pace if we are to come through.”

Arsenal did not have a game in midweek, unlike Stoke, whose extra-time victory over City earned them a quarter-final tie with Chelsea in the FA Cup. But Wenger, who should welcome back striker Eduardo this weekend but is still without key injured quartet Gallas, Abou Diaby, Andrey Arshavin and Robin van Persie, does not believe the Potters’ exertions on Wednesday will be a factor.

“Let’s not expect any weakness from Stoke,” he said. “When they play us, they are always committed. There have been so many times where we have been in this situation and we have managed to get results. I believe it is for us to turn up and be efficient on the day.”