Having watched countless Arsene Wenger press conferences, we here at Arseblog News are convinced that sometimes he pretends not to hear what someone asks him, or not to quite understand, just to kind of mess with the questioner.

A cock of the head, a puzzled look, and the initially confident journalist begins to sound a bit unsure of himself.

There was a classic example of that at today’s press briefing when one intrepid reporter tried to stir up the Alexis Sanchez – Christian Fuchs incident, looking to draw the Arsenal manager into some comments about the Chilean’s behaviour after the ball had been thrown at him.

It went like this:

Intrepid Reporter: Have you spoke to Alexis Sanchez since the match on Wednesday about what happened? Because there’s an awful lot of negative reaction over what happened towards him on the … err … internet and … uhm … err … and the media.

[silence]

Arsene Wenger: To?

IR: Alexis Sanchez … the-

AW: No, I haven’t spoken to him after the game. No.

IR: Right, is the incident closed as far as you’re concerned?

AW: About?!

IR [stuttering]: About the … the falling … the ball in the face.

AW: Yes, err … I think so, yes. I have seen exactly what happened yet on the tape. I think he was a bit surprised, because he was close to Fuchs, you know. And overall, yes, I think he got a yellow card for it because he was too close, and Fuchs would have deserved one as well.

IR: Are you going to look at the incident?

AW: Yeah.

IR: And then-

AW: Yeah, I’ll speak with him. I’m not sure he knew exactly the rule.

[pauses, looks at IR] – Do you know the rule?

IR: Well, I suppose most people would think it was rather embarrassing what happened really.

AW: It’s embarrassing? Er … embarrassing, I don’t really feel like that, no.

IR: Right.

He then goes on to ask a question about Sp*rs imploding this time last year, never answering the question about whether he knew the rule or not. This makes me think he did not know the rule.

For shame.