Wenger frustrated by Debuchy

Arsene Wenger has contested claims made by Mathieu Debuchy, with the manager taking the unusual step of effectively accusing a player under contract of lying.

After Wenger confirmed that the club were open to letting Debuchy go in the winter, the manager then called the article, originally in L’Equipe, frustrating, citing Debuchy’s injury record and the lack of interest from any team during the summer:

It’s a little bit a frustrated article from a player who is injured. You know, when you are injured you cannot play. When he had the opportunities to play, when Bellerin was injured, he was injured. I cannot do anything about that.

I gave him last year the opportunity to go to Bordeaux on loan but we had nobody coming in for him during the summer period.

There are some things that are not true in this article, we never blocked him to go to Fiorentina nor Espanyol – they had no interest in him at all. We checked that.

Wenger went on to deny that he blocked Debuchy leaving for Manchester United last January, saying that no official approach was ever made.

Debuchy’s tendency to publicly air his frustration at his lack of playing time while showing less appreciation for correct positioning than a poorly trained puppy has irked, and that has seemingly become the position of the manager, who effectively went in with both barrels.

One would not expect Debuchy to still be at the club come February, but he’s been on the market for 12 months, and the club’s still not suckered another team into paying real, hard cash for him.