Arsène Wenger has said Arsenal were at fault for Alexis Sánchez missing a doping test but that the club and player have “nothing to hide”.
Arsenal’s manager confirmed the forward inadvertently missed the test on Monday while finalising a move to Manchester United. Sánchez fell foul of the Football Association’s “whereabouts” rule by not being present. Wenger said the Chilean was with his agent, concluding the transfer, which was confirmed that evening.
As part of the FA’s anti-doping guidelines, the governing body must be notified if a player is due to be absent from a scheduled training session. Wenger accepted it had been Arsenal’s responsibility to do this in Sánchez’s case. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Sánchez or the clubs.
Wenger, who said he had not heard from the FA or UK Anti-Doping, said: “I’m quite relaxed because we have nothing to hide here, we always try our best to cooperate with doping control. I pushed always for football to do more against doping so I don’t see why we shouldn’t cooperate. We try our best but this was a special day.
“The most important is that the intention is right. The intention of Alexis was certainly not to hide – nor was our intention to hide anything. We have nothing to hide.”
Wenger said exceptional circumstances had led to Sánchez missing the test. “It is a special day for Alexis Sánchez because you have to do paperwork, you have to travel and is he still our player on Monday or not? You don’t know with negotiations going on. I think it’s a special event for him to miss a drug test because he was certainly busy somewhere else with his agent. Overall he has been tested so many times here that it is no worry for me that he has any doping problem. It’s just a bad day for him to be tested.
“Honestly on the administration side it would certainly be our responsibility because on the day he had not moved so maybe it will be down to us. I don’t really know what happened.”
Wenger said that a prospective deal for the Borussia Dortmund striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was “far from close”.