Ahead of the final Premier League game of the season against Everton on Sunday, Arsene Wenger has once again refused to be drawn on his Arsenal future. However, he did reveal a board meeting will take place after the FA Cup final with Chelsea.
He said he couldn’t comment on his future when addressing the media in his news conference ahead of Sunday’s game, insisting Arsenal’s only focus is a bid to secure a top-four finish from Everton’s visit to the Emirates Stadium and clash with Chelsea at Wembley a week Saturday.
Wenger was quoted by Sky Sports: ‘I cannot tell you (about my future). The most important thing is to win on Sunday and what happens to me after can wait. I’m here to serve the club. I think the board meeting is after the FA Cup final. I will be there. At the moment I think we should focus on the short-term; on the last game and the cup final. There are lots of different aspects of a football club that have to be discussed at a board meeting and one of them will be the manager’s future, as well as the players that have to come in, the contracts and all of that. You don’t miss problems in a board meeting.’
But he did answer ‘yeah, of course’ when asked if an announcement will finally be made in the aftermath of this Arsenal board meeting – obviously if it wasn’t, and a new contract wasn’t announced, Wenger’s deal would merely run down and answer the question the boss hasn’t been willing to.
With all contract talks on hold until the end of the season, Wenger was given his usual questioning about Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez.
If not extended, they will have another year on their contracts and Wenger hopes to ‘one day’ comment on new deals but in the meantime he doesn’t feel either are playing out the season as if they didn’t want to be at Arsenal in the long-term.
He said: ‘Maybe one day I might be able to speak about that, but I don’t question their determination and focus because every game they turn up with strong performances. First of all they’re under contract and they behave like they want to be at the club, be in the champions League. They don’t behave like players who don’t want to be at the club.’
