Roger Bennett of Men in Blazers interviews Arsene Wenger

Roger Bennett, of Men in Blazers and NBC Sports fame, interviewed Arsene Wenger for a documentary film celebrating the Arsenal manager’s 20 years at the club. That documentary, “Inside the Mind of Arsene Wenger”, will debut on NBCSN on Saturday at 12:30pm EST. Until then, enjoy the 15 minute snippet Rog released in podcast form.

Below are some choice quotes from the podcast.

On whether he’d pick not winning trophies but playing with style or winning and play ugly:

You cannot be a big club and say to everybody, “Look my friends, buy a season ticket, because we want to win ugly.” That will not go far. So you have to have the desire to win, but as well, the big clubs need to have the ambition to win with style. People want to come and see an experience that fulfills them for the game they love.

On what makes a great manager:

When all goes well, all the managers in the world are good, but the quality of the manager...look, when he stands in the crisis and has to face it, how quickly can he stop it?

On how he deals with the stress of coaching:

Football is spectacular because it’s uncertain. This uncertainty creates a huge stress. But at the end of the day, my optimistic personality always takes over. The future will be good. Just work hard, put the effort in, do the right things and the future will be alright.

Check out the pod for yourself, and be sure to tune into the documentary on Saturday. Whatever your feelings about the manager are, there are few things more interesting than listening to him speak “in a moment of rest” as the host put it, away from press conferences.