Wenger: Board backing always there

Manager Arsene Wenger maintains he has always felt fully supported by the Arsenal board.

Uzbekh billionaire Alisher Usmanov, the club’s second-largest shareholder — whose Red & White Holdings group are not represented on the board — claimed Wenger did not have enough backing and blasted the decision to sell captain Robin van Persie to rivals Manchester United in a £24 million (€29m) deal last summer.

Wenger, though, feels the club’s policy of self-sustainability will pay dividends in the long term.

“I believe I have always had the support from the board, and am very grateful for that. We have worked over the years in respecting in what we did, which is to always work within our financial resources,” said Wenger.

“Therefore we made decisions which from outside looked not based on purely footballing reasons, but it was based as well on financial reasons.”

Arsenal this week announced new long-term deals for Jack Wilshere, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Kieran Gibbs, Carl Jenkinson and Aaron Ramsey and Wenger remains hopeful Theo Walcott will follow suit and commit his future to the club, with his contract set to expire at the end of the season.

However, he insists just simply spending big in the January sales will not necessarily take Arsenal forward.

“Let’s see how far this team can go. If we can add one or two exceptional players, we will do it,” he said.

Usmanov, 59, has an estimated fortune of $18 billion (€13 billion) and maintains his long-term ambition is to take a controlling interest in Arsenal, where American Stan Kroenke is the majority shareholder.

Usmanov said: “I want to take this opportunity to just reaffirm that in order to help the team, we would be ready to buy more shares, to buy control, to buy all shares.

“We are ready to do all that we can in order to help the company, in order to consider any form of cooperation or ownership with the team.

“If I have a big stake in Arsenal, of course I have my opinion what we must do but we will see, we will wait and maybe when I wake up some day I have this Arsenal club.”

Usmanov added: “I always tell Mr Wenger he is one of the best coaches and football managers in the world, but I openly admit he has many, many difficulties to contend with. This decision (selling Van Persie) was a mistake. If I am one of Wenger’s players I would want to stay for the finish, but he explained Robin wanted to go to win trophies.”