It is not a good look, and it can never be a good look, when a Premier League footballer is caught up in a post-nightclub “disagreement” with members of a rival strutting peacock gang.
Jack Wilshere added the must‑not‑have accoutrement in the small hours of last Sunday after his enforced departure from the Cafe de Paris in central London, when he was captured by the camera-phone paparazzi being spoken to by the Metropolitan police.
It was not the first time Wilshere had attracted unwanted attention for his off-the-field behaviour and, given the number of boxes the story ticked, it has been no surprise to see it maintain its legs throughout the week.
And yet, as Arsène Wenger pointed out on Thursday, the “real question” did not concern the ethics of whether Wilshere ought to have put himself in such a situation – rather, if it would have a negative impact on his football, as he prepares to make a comeback from his season-wrecking fractured fibula for the Arsenal under-21s against Newcastle United at the Emirates Stadium on Friday night.
Wenger had the answers. At times like these, the manager almost always opts for the path of least resistance and it is easy to wonder whether his words in public match those behind closed doors – in this case, the chat he had with Wilshere at the beginning of the working week. That said, his arguments were sound and convincing.
“The sports science point of view is that if you are not training the next day [as Wilshere was not] – you have exactly the same impact as if you were lying on your bed and not being able to sleep until two in the morning,” Wenger said.
But what if alcohol were factored in? It should be noted it has merely been assumed Wilshere was drinking and, in the footage obtained by the Daily Mirror, the 24-year-old was hardly falling about like a lord.
According to Martin Keown, the former Arsenal defender, Wenger considers drinking alcohol to be “effectively like poisoning your muscles”. The manager stood by that line. “Of course, drinking alcohol is bad,” Wenger said. “Not only for football players but for everybody. You need your body.”
There was a lighthearted interlude when Wenger remembered that journalists needed only their brains. “Maybe, alcohol can make you more creative,” he said. Wenger has a view that journalists spend a massive amount of time in philosophical discussion, although never in the mornings because they do not get up then. The feeling persists this is why he calls his press conferences at 9am in St Albans.
But Wenger’s serious point would follow. Wilshere was in for training on Monday morning and he was 100%. “He had a hard session on Monday and he did very well,” Wenger said. “So if he had been heavy drinking on Sunday, I don’t think he would have survived. The real question is this: ‘Does Jack have the serious life or not?’ A player cannot hide when you watch him practise every day. Jack is serious in his life.”
The bottom line is that there is, indeed, nowhere for the modern player to hide and it was tempting to wonder what Wenger’s first Arsenal squad from 1996 would have made of it all. Back then, the drinking culture was embedded and, to illustrate the point, Ray Parlour told the story on Wednesday about when he and the then Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard once went for a night at the Cafe de Paris.
“I was a little bit worse for wear and remember getting up to go to the toilet,” Parlour said. “They had these wire stools and, as I got up, my foot got stuck in the wire – I tripped over and headbutted the bar. I ended up having to have seven stitches.”
These days, Southampton players, for example, give a urine sample before training each morning, which is analysed to help with their conditioning programme, and Wenger said Arsenal employed similar methods.
“Scientifically, we control very well our players,” he said. “Sometimes, you wonder if we are not too scientific now and predict absolutely everything. But that is the way that the society has gone.
“We test our players and we don’t have a drinking problem. The drinking problem was much bigger when I arrived. We test them regularly. Jack is not a drinker – at all. I don’t even have that worry. Not at all.”
Wilshere is a popular figure at Arsenal and it is worth remembering he puts a lot of his energy into the club’s community and charity-based projects. On a more trivial but nonetheless revealing level, he is always sound with journalists, even when the chips are down. Many players are not. It is reflective of Wilshere’s big heart and character.
On the other hand, he is easily egged on by his mates and he does not always have the awareness of when and how to hold it down. This has led to no little exasperation at Arsenal, where he is considered to be like a naughty younger brother.
To Wenger, though, Wilshere is not a bad boy and his tone was supportive. “The difference between you and Jack is that you can go out until two in the morning and not be provoked,” the Frenchman said. “That’s sometimes difficult. You cannot ban a guy who is 20 years old never to go out.
“Ronaldo and Messi have been photographed [outside nightclubs] 48 hours before games, which Wilshere has never done. You want them to behave well, of course but, first of all, to perform well on the pitch. That’s their job. Let Jack come back and, if he does well for England at the European Championship, he’ll be the hero.”