Football
ESPN staff 8y

Arsene Wenger gave Arsenal players more freedom - Nigel Winterburn

Former Arsenal defender Nigel Winterburn says that while Arsene Wenger banned alcohol and restricted players' diets upon his arrival at the club, his most effective change was giving the squad more freedom on the pitch.

Wenger will celebrate 20 years in charge of Arsenal on Oct. 1, and Winterburn was part of the Gunners squad when the Frenchman first arrived at the club in 1996.

Wenger is famed for making drastic changes to Arsenal players' diets following his appointment, but Winterburn believes it was his work on the training pitch that proved most influential.

"He had already introduced subtle changes," Winterburn, who played for Arsenal from 1987 to 2000, is quoted as saying by the Daily Mirror. "For a start, the players' bar stopped alcohol after matches. He made us eat an hour after the game.

"A lot has been made about the diet he introduced at the training ground and the supplements and tablets. To be honest, that didn't have too much of an effect on me. I mean, you can dictate what players eat at the training ground but there is nothing you can do once they leave, is there?

"No, it was the attention to detail that really impressed me. In the preseason ahead of his first full season, he had different programmes depending on your age. In my group, we had one more second to do an exercise. It doesn't sound a lot but it was important. We ended up doing the same -- sometimes more -- as the younger ones.

"And everything, from day one of preseason, was done with a ball. We were a little surprised by that. We never used to see one for a week."

Winterburn was part of a group of Arsenal defenders -- also including Tony Adams, Martin Keown, Lee Dixon and Steve Bould -- who were entering the latter stage of their careers when Wenger arrived.

And Winterburn feels the Frenchman's methods helped to extend their playing time on the pitch.

"When he saw what my group had as a unit, he didn't change just for the sake of it," Winterburn said. "He believed we still had something to offer and in fact I played for three more seasons.

"What did he say to us? He just gave us more freedom. The defensive discipline was still there -- I mean, we had played all those years under George Graham, so that was never going to leave us!"

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