Arsène Wenger believes that Gareth Southgate is the outstanding candidate to be appointed as the next permanent manager of England. In a very small field, Wenger has been linked to the position as well, with the Football Association’s chief executive, Martin Glenn, having said that “he’d fit the criteria perfectly”.
Wenger’s contract with Arsenal expires at the end of the season and he has flirted with the idea of managing the country in which he has lived and worked for the past 20 years. But it is certain that he will be offered a new deal at Arsenal and, in recent days, he has appeared to distance himself from the possibility of taking the England job next summer.
The Frenchman’s priority is Arsenal and he has effectively offered his blessing to Southgate being given the national team role. Southgate is currently two games into a four-game spell as the caretaker manager, following Sam Allardyce’s departure last month.
“Is Southgate the outstanding candidate for the job? Yes,” Wenger said. “In England, there’s always the demand for the big names – that is the difficulty. What is most important to me is the competence of the person and, if a person is competent, then he can make a name for himself. He [Southgate] has a good opportunity to show that. I’m happy to see that he has an opportunity to show that he has quality.
“He has handled himself quite well. He has accumulated experiences, first with Middlesbrough and now with the FA. He was a good observer of what was going on in the English national team and, after that, we’re in a job where you are questioned, especially when you have less experience. The only answer he can give is by doing his job, and our job is selection and decision making. He has to show that the decisions he makes are the right ones, and that he has the strength to do what he believes is right.”
Wenger’s focus is on Saturday’s visit of Swansea City to the Emirates Stadium – a fixture that Arsenal lost 2-1 last season, in what was a low ebb. He will once again have to make do without Aaron Ramsey and Olivier Giroud, whose hamstring and big toe injuries, respectively, are niggling to the extent that Wenger says he has put each of them on a pre-season programme in a bid to kick-start them. It is difficult to see either of them returning before the beginning of November.
In better news, Francis Coquelin has made a quicker-than-expected recovery from the nasty-looking knee injury that he suffered against Chelsea on 24 September and he is available for Swansea. Carl Jenkinson will play for the club’s under-23 team on Friday night against Southampton, after his long-term lay-off because of knee ligament damage.
“I must say I’m disappointed [for Ramsey] because he has worked very hard,” Wenger said of the midfielder who has not featured since the opening game of the season against Liverpool on 14 August. “He had a few little setbacks that forced us to be cautious with him. He’s not far away now. He’s at the last stage of building up his fitness.
“Next week will come too early for him and it’s been a bit of a vicious circle. He had a little setback, so we rested him. The longer that lasts, the more time you have to dedicate to build up his fitness again. Then, you have to basically create a new three-week preparation to get him up to the level he was at before the injury. It’s more the time it takes to rebuild his fitness. We have decided that we’ll give him a complete pre-season, even if he misses one or two more games.
“Giroud will be a little bit the same because he has been out now – he has still not been on the pitches. I think he starts to have a jog again today for the first time, so he has been interrupted a lot in his preparation. We have to build his fitness up again.”
Wenger said that the club intended to offer Héctor Bellerin a new contract, even though his current deal runs until 2019. The right-back has been linked with a move to Barcelona, the club where he began his career at youth level.
“Of course, his future is here,” Wenger said. “That’s why I’m surprised by the speculation. He has nearly three years to go and we always try get the players to the level where we think they deserve to be. So, we try to extend, certainly, his contract. For me, his long-term future is here.
“He has been absolutely fantastic. Let’s not forget that in his first start, he had a nightmare when I played him [away to Borussia Dortmund] and he was the year before [in 2013-14] at Watford – he didn’t play. His progress has been absolutely spectacular, because he has absolutely top mental strength. I think he loves, as well, to be here and he has responsibilities already in the dressing room. At such a young age, it’s something remarkable.”