Arsène Wenger has told Real Madrid to forget about making an approach for him in the summer if, as expected, they part company with their coach, Manuel Pellegrini. Florentino Pérez, the Real president, tried to entice Wenger from Arsenal last summer, as he embarked upon his second galácticos project at the Bernabéu, only to be rebuffed, and Wenger said that any renewed attempt would meet with the same result.
Real remain in a state of shock after their Champions League exit at the hands of Lyon on Wednesday night, the sixth season in succession that they have left Europe's elite competition at the first knockout stage, and Pellegrini is set to pay for the failure with his job. In that event it is likely that Wenger would again feature prominently on Pérez's list of targets.
Wenger joked yesterday that Real ought to "leave me alone" when the subject of him potentially being chased by the club was broached. "I am always going to the end of my contract and I am going to 2011," he said. "There is no way."
Wenger was disillusioned towards the end of last season when Arsenal had endured a tough time on the pitch and he was the focus for a disgruntled minority of supporters. There was a feeling that he used Pérez's interest in him as a device to remind those fans what they would miss if he were to leave. The overwhelming majority of Arsenal supporters remained supportive and it was also difficult to see Wenger at Real, a club whose values appear so different from his own. Wenger offered a straight bat yesterday when, before the Premier League visit to Hull City tomorrow, he was asked to give the details of Pérez's approach to him last summer.
"For me it is the worst moment to come back on that," he said, with a smile. "At the moment I focus on Hull City. Maybe it's less glamorous than Real Madrid but they are much more important in my life at the moment."
Pérez spent £240m on new signings last summer, including Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaká, and his dream was to contest the Champions League final in May, which will be staged at the Bernabéu. But Wenger warmed to a familiar theme when he pointed out that money does not guarantee success and he also suggested that Real's toils ought to put into perspective the level of Arsenal's consistent achievements in Europe in the recent past.
"£240m doesn't buy you the Champions League necessarily," he said. "If you can spend it every year, you will get there but it is the first year of Pérez back and you have to give him time. He only has to invest again next year, so I think they will be a force again. But at the moment it's difficult to take for them.
"In the last five years we have been in the [Champions League] final, the semi-final, two times the quarter-final. It is the consistency that is the most difficult to achieve at the top level because you have so many teams that want to be in there. When you just turn up regularly, in England, we don't rate that any more because we are used to it. But it's not easy."
There was conjecture at the beginning of the season that the balance of power had transferred from the Premier League to La Liga, with Ronaldo and Xabi Alonso having swapped Manchester United and Liverpool respectively for Real, Barcelona being the Champions League holders and Spain the European champions. The most recent set of Champions League results would appear to challenge that theory.
"It shows the strength of the league here," said Wenger, who revealed that he would be without his captain, Cesc Fábregas, at Hull because of hamstring damage. "In England you could have three teamsthrough to the Champions League quarter-final and you have Fulham and Liverpool who are fighting in the Europa League. At the moment England is very strong.
"In the Premier League this season the top teams have lost more games domestically but that had no consequences on Europe. We have not weakened internationally. The Premier League has maybe become stronger."
