Wenger tells of his love of young boys

In an exclusive interview with News direct this morning at Arsenal's new state of the art Shenley training ground, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger talked passionately about his vision for the the club and of his love of young boys.

The trophy laden Frenchman began by talking about the club's magnificent new training facilities and how he had been instrumental in the design and building of the new twenty five million pound complex.

Over cups of Pernod laced coffee in his luxurious office, over looking the youth pitches, Mr Wenger told me of the inspiration and vision behind the clubs new facility, "When I first came to the club we trained in a very bad way, and it was always my intention to build a nice new place, a place where I could safely groom new young talent away from the prying eyes of the media."

As the normally reserved manager held forth on his favourite topic you could see an almost boyish gleam in his eye and his obvious excitement as he reminisced about how he first became involved with young boys, "I remember as a young coach, I was always fascinated by the youth teams and would spend long hours hanging around the youth pitches, dreaming of the day I could take these young men in hand and show them how to perfect their often clumsy ball control."

When Wenger was first appointed to the position of manager, dubious voices in the media famously asked, "Arsene who?" and at first, the arrival of this complete unknown from Japanese club football did cause some disturbance among the clubs senior professionals, but as club captain Tony Adams was later to say, "Weeks after him arriving, he totally changed the culture of the club and he began this change by putting a huge emphasis on the young players at the club, encouraging the older pro's to mix and train with the younger lads, even going as far as to put Seaman in the youth team."

Wenger's obvious love of young talent has seen him bring major honours to the north London club and the development of the new training ground is seen by many as the final piece of the jigsaw which will eventually lead to the club capturing the ultimate European prize, he finished the interview by shrugging Gallically and declaring, "Of course I wont lie and say I'm not interested in winning the European cup, of course I am, but if we never won it, I wouldn't care, as long as I can continue to groom young boys for the future."