Give Wenger a break, says Brady

Clearly, Chippy wasn’t feeling so chirpy, and it wasn’t just a routine case of the Monday morning blues.

“Ok, fellas, I was hoping that Arsenal would win yesterday,” sighed Liam Brady by way of greeting to the journalists who’d gathered at Dublin’s Merrion Hotel for an ESPN-hosted chinwag with Irish football legends Brady and Kevin Sheedy. “That would have made this press conference a lot easier...”

All those years at Arsenal might have served only to intensify the pain of defeat to Spurs but the most famous Irish Gunner of all reckons this latest setback represents less a shift in the balance of power in North London than a reflection of the difference one inspirational player can make.