Why do Arsenal players criticise their teammates?

This isn’t a slight against Arsenal, any Arsenal player or the Arsenal manager – more a question about Wenger’s management methods.

At times in the last two seasons it’s almost as if William Gallas never stopped talking to the press. He’d talk about the players, the team, himself, the manager – anything that was put to him, he’d have a nice chat about it.

Then we had the running sideshow between Almunia and Lehmann – you couldn’t miss it even if you tried, and while a lot was made of Lehmann’s ‘eccentric’ behavior the fact remained that this sort of stuff needed to stay in the dressing room, not get aired in public and tarnish the image of the club.

This season we have Tomas Rosicky getting chatty about Gallas, Clichy and Adebayor. I like Rosicky, I like his girl and I like his football – and granted that what he’s saying is how the team has improved – but didn’t anyone TELL you that saying ‘player X messed up last year’ is going to raise unnecessary controversy?

This is a case where Arsene Wenger needs to be tougher on his players and drill it into them that when they talk to the press, they need to omit certain opinions and focus on wholly positive comments. You might argue that they’re just saying the truth and what they say is being taken out of context but why are you giving them fuel to throw their matches on in the first place?

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