Arsene Wenger has confirmed that Alex Iwobi will be fined for being out late less than 48 hours before a game, calling the 22 year old’s behaviour ‘unacceptable’.
However, the manager took at the pop at The Sun for the way the story was reported, in which they tried to infer that the Arsenal player was involved in drug taking.
None of us should be surprised that the world’s scummiest newspaper decided that Iwobi being at a party should be considered front page news, calling it a ‘drug party’ ensured the scandal/outrage-ometer hit maximum, but while Wenger was rightly critical of his player, he also hit out at the way the story was reported.
“If that is true he will be fined,” said the Frenchman. “It is impossible to go out 48 hours before the game, and it’s unacceptable.
“I will, of course, have to see him to see if that is right or not.”
Later, the manager was asked if he was disappointed in Iwobi being out ‘the night before the game’, to which he interrupted, “It was not the night before the game, it was 48 hours before the game.
“The night before we were in a hotel, but it’s not acceptable and I will have to speak to him about that.
“First of all you have to be cautious with all the news always coming out. When you read what is reported it is like he has taken drugs.
“He is not involved in that at all, he has been out at a birthday party. How long has he stayed? That is very important, after I will decide what happens.
Wenger insisted Iwobi was not drinking or taking drugs, saying, “If your neighbour takes drugs, what can you do about it? You are responsible for your own behaviour, not for that of your neighbour.”
There was no hiding the fact that Iwobi has fallen short of the standards expected, but it would be worth remembering the source of this story, what an absolute lying scumbag rag it is, and that Iwobi is still a young man.
He’s made a mistake, albeit a relatively innocent one when you think of the history of our club and some of the behaviour of our players down the years, and hopefully this will teach him a real lesson.
But when it comes to one of our players vs The Sun, there’s only one side any of us should be on, regardless of what you think of him or his form.
Will the manager be fined for fielding a shite team?
You’re just lucky we don’t hand out fines for shite comments 😉
Can I just say, what really bothers me the most about this whole thing is this huge media bias against an Arsenal player. There is literally a clear photo of Nathaniel Clyne getting high from sucking on the knot of a balloon at a party – literally getting high – doing the rounds online and nobody says a thing. iwobi is dancing with some mates at a party, I don’t even think he’s even got a can on the go, yet he’s on the front page of the Sun where they are making him out to be Charlie Sheen high… Read more »
No wonder Trump hits out at the media.
Trump is a cunt – there is no comparison
He’s a cunt who deserves even less respect than the Sun.
Across the political spectrum people had legit issues with journalistic standards. The Iraq War debacle, phone-hacking and the Leveson inquiry, news outlets embracing clickbait in the scramble from print to online, political disinformation around elections…
and that bloated orange child exploited and hijacked all that scepticism and anger about journalistic standards to use as a shield against any news that threatens him personally.
There’s a reason the term “f*ke n*ws” is a no-no on this site.
That is an unfair slander to all proper cunts
To be fair though blogs, he did field a shite team who also played shite.
Yeah, but that’s not what this article was about. If only we’d published a number of pieces over the last few days on which comments pertaining to that shite performance could have been made.
Like a match report maybe: http://news.arseblog.com/2018/01/report-nottingham-forest-4-2-arsenal-inc-goals/
Or player ratings: http://news.arseblog.com/2018/01/nottingham-forest-4-2-arsenal-player-ratings/
Or stats on the game: http://news.arseblog.com/2018/01/nottingham-forest-4-2-arsenal-by-the-numbers/
Or Wenger’s post-match reaction to it: http://news.arseblog.com/2018/01/wenger-many-times-we-got-away-with-it-not-today/
🙂
Blogs getting a little defensive. Rise above it, my man! 🙂
That fine is paid by the fans.
So we pay the fine and he will pocket £7m a year for assembling this team. Great!!
Karthik…isn’t there a team in blue somewhere that you could take your shit ass attitude to? No one wants your moaning here.
I have my rights to moan about my team and my manager. YOu can down vote me but cant ask me to support another team or not moan here.
Can all football clubs just follow Liverpool’s lead and refuse to have anything to do with the Scum?
Haven’t Everton done something similar? The Sun is an absolute disgrace to anything that has to do with journalism.
The city of Liverpool as a whole, doesn’t even get free copies when the scum does its promotions
I am part of a fun football discussion group on fb and we too have banned The posing if any Sun articles
Fuck the S*n
*The Scum
Can’t stand the Sun NP. The amount of times I get it offered free when I fill up with petrol. I take great pleasure in refusing it unless I have run out of bog roll at home…
I wouldn’t even wipe my ass with it
It’d only make it dirty, anyway.
Lol
Tabloid slime aside, I didn’t realize he is 22 years old. Not quite sure he’ll make it. He has to add a lot to his game despite the obvious potential.
He’s not 22 until May
All of our players who are 24 or younger – Iwobi, Bellerin, AMN, Kolasinac, Chambers and Holding – have time on their side. They at least deserve a chance to work under a new coaching set-up before we write them off.
The abuse our younger players in particular get from the “fans” is a bloody disgrace. Imagine being in your early twenties and having thousands of supporters tearing the shit out of you in the most vile terms because you had a bad day at the office. Then these same people who kicked you repeatedly when you were down insist that you never consider another job regardless of what is going on in your family life. They’re young men, barely more than kids, and deserve a bit of perspective.
Fair enough. Still 22 at the end of the season. Hope he gets out of this tough bout of form. 22 is not so young.
In your blog you write that you think this is wengers last season. Curious. He signed a two year extension. I can’t see him stepping down and i can’t see kronke firing him?
Do you have inside info or just your gut.
I recommend the Arsecast Extra from yesterday. It was quite good, and Blogs elaborates on his thoughts there. 🙂
Indeed I do – discussion of the Wenger situation is at the beginning of part 2, around 45 minutes in: https://www.acast.com/arseblog/arsecastextraepisode208-08.01.2018
Good morning blogs. In the podcast above, you mentioned that you only listen to yankeegunner’s podcast. Would you be a gem and post the web address to his blog please. I too would also like to listen to their podcast as I always value Tim Stilman’s comments about Arsenal
Here you go mate https://www.acast.com/arsenalvision
Thank you Blogs. Something interesting to listen to on my way home from work. My drive home on Mondays are the best as I enjoy listening to blogs and gunnerblog talk sense about Arsenal
Guest host (Elliott) was great as well. Very good podcast…as usual 🙂
“When it comes to one of our players vs The Sun, there’s only one side any of us should be on.”
Don’t tell me what to think. Having said that I’m sure that the Sun are either inventing this or blowing it out of all proportion.
sort of like they invented Hillsborough victims going through dead people’s pockets
Or undermining unions, ruining lives/careers with smut, Murdoch being an odious cunt who’ve strong armed UK politics/elections for decades, Rebecca Wade getting away with murder (at least tapping the phones of the family of a murdered child)…and the rest. Scum isn’t enough to sum them up.
I think you mean “imply” instead of “infer”.
dont shoot the messenger. Iwobi has been playing like sht and he played like sht after partying before last match. fck him
If the messenger is The Sun, shooting is too good for them
The Guardian’s also reporting this, so no need to soil your browsing history by visiting that rag. (and mine’s pretty colourful to say the least!)
The Guardian is hard at work becoming the Sun for champagne socialists. I wouldn’t trust them much more than I trust any other UK tabloid.
Horses for courses me thinks, but if you are comparing the sun with The Guardian, then you’ve lost the plot.
The Guardian prints as much bullshit as The Sun but pretends their shit doesn’t stink as bad but it does. Nonsense is nonsense regardless of which side of the political spectrum it comes from. Try reading Laurie Penny’s articles if you don’t believe me.
If you call yourself a football fan and still buy the Sun, you’re a proper twat. That is all
If you call yourself a decent human being and buy the Sun you’re a proper twat.
So yeah, I get it – The Sun is a filthy tabloid, It doesn’t change the fact that Iwobi partied hard a night before the game. He shouldn’t only be fined, he should be out of the team for a while, But that ain’t gonna happen cause he’s Wenger’s baby…
This whole ‘We should forgive him since he’s young and The Sun is shit’ attitude is just stupid – That’s part of the reason why some players in the team over the years can do whatever the fuck they want, knowing there’s probably no consequences for their actions (Wilshere, Szczesny…)
It wasn’t the night before the game. It’s ok to be critical of his behaviour, but important to deal in facts.
Hmm. Knee jerk outrage from skimming a story.
I’m curious to who are the players that can do whatever the fuck they want without consequence? In both examples, prices were paid for their malcontent.
Should be more professional but the sun can fuck right off. He’s one of ours, so FUCK OFF.
Are we sure Rob wasnt out and about with him?
Looked like his gyro had toppled v Forest.
I love you Arseblog. Such a measured view of things
Thanks ?
Fuck the sun! As long as iwobi’s form picks up, i don’t care what he does off the pitch. Again…fuck the sun!
Hey. What’s the problem if he goes to birthday party?
Is it only me or the kind of press conferences that we are having recently – wherein the focus is totally to extract as much negativity from the coach – just sad? I mean the main thing on agenda of the reporter who interviewed Conte the other day after the FA cup game was Mourinho comments. I mean that’s so petty. Media is reaching absolutely pathetic levels. They focus on everything but football. The same is happening in Iwobis case.. there has to be some limit.
Football is eating itself
It’s not just football. You get this sort of sensationalist shit in all other news. The motive is to generate clicks and get higher up in search engine ranks for advertisers.
It’s been going on for a long time.
To be fair, these tabloids simply exist to peddle this trash. They’ve done it with Grealish, Ibe, and their favourite target of sensationalist (and racially charged) ‘reporting’ Raheem Sterling.
Very naive and irresponsible of Iwobi…he should be focusing on improving as a footballer and keeping his head down. Having a bunch of people pointing mobile phones at him and then leaking it is hopefully a great learning curve…those aren’t your friends.
He must be dropped and then sold. He dont respect the fans and the fans are arsenal fc. Wenger tippy toes around this crap and his performances of late have been bad. His lazy for a young man
I’m starting to think the “fans” don’t deserve a whole lot of respect.
Jeez, like someone commented earlier….some perspectives please. This is just a twenty one year old and we’ve all been there ….yes!, he gets paid gazillions and so should behave better, reality though is, that sense of responsibility comes at a slightly older age and its called maturity, and this do and get caught thing is part of the learning curve he goes through to get there. We also all forget these kids don’t have a normal childhood like everybody else which is bound to have an impact when they to this ‘raving’ age, where me and you are out shooting… Read more »
I haven’t read any of the press on this, but if he’s gone out to a party that close to a game then what a dick head. Surely he has enough people in his life like his very talented uncle, to tell him to get his head down while he’s having such a poor run of form. I’d be tempted to loan him out for the rest of the season somewhere really shit so he can realise how good he has got it…we can’t afford to deal with this behaviour or poor form right now.
Jay-Jay Okocha who owns a couple of nightclubs? Not likely.
Wenger’s readiness to defend Iwobi tells us he’s not a bad kid. I’d loan out half the boardroom, starting with that arrogant c*nt Chips Keswick, to Yeovil or somesuch place before I touched a hair on the head of any of our young players.
Haha didn’t know that.
Could we loan Stan to some other club as well? A year at the helm of Spuds should see them firmly back where they belong. Then we’ll sell him for fuck all to Citeh.
The thing is, people complain all the time that young footballers are completely detached from reality.
Then when they do mix it with everybody else it’s the end of the fucking world.
There’s been a lot of hate on Iwobi. BUT remember he is still only 22yrs. Frankly I feel Wenger is not getting the best out of him bc positionally he is being used too high up. Iwobi I feel has the requisites to prosper deeper in midfield where his strength and general good control on the ball could be more useful if married properly with discipline. He’s also fond of moving with the ball which gives us someone-else to develop in the Jack mold. Its the reverse with Ramsey whom I feel Wenger is wrong to play so deep. Rambo’s… Read more »
‘Deeper midfield where his strength and control’ ? Have you been watching his last dozen performances? He is hprribly profligate with his passing and only seems to find feet when passing square or backwards. He CANNOT tackle – and never seems to try either. Much continues to be made of his ‘strength’ however he only ever uses it to try to keep the ball when attacking and never to win it back when he’s lost it (which he too often does). The sight of him, socks down, trudging around near the centre circle when we are under pressure and being… Read more »
I know Alex very well like a son ofy own. He does not drink smoke or take drugs. The Sun rag is a disgrace for suggesting such things.
Wow – seems pretty innocuous dancing at a mate’s party. That said, if it was at 2 a.m. and then he plays as shit as he did against Forest there should be quiet punishment handed out by the club.
Iwobi is a young player who needs to be given a proper role and good structure.
He needs to be played deeper where he can see the game better, use his strength and ball control, profit from his ability to dribble up field (like Jack) and do what he does best like receive ball and turn immediately to face opponents (unlike Granit or Ramsey)
He needs management.
Wait isn’t this like going out on Saturday night before work on MONDAY?