So it is more than a little disarming to hear the Frenchman, ahead of a clash spiked by memories of Ryan Shawcross’s leg-breaking challenge on Aaron Ramsey two seasons ago, praise the tackle as a “fantastic technique”.
Wenger was so outraged by the Shawcross lunge, which left Ramsey with a double fracture in his lower right leg, that he even questioned his future in the game. “I’m shocked, that wasn’t football,” the Frenchman said on a grisly night at the Britannia Stadium last February. “If I have to live with that, I don’t want to be involved.”
