Arsene Wenger claims no doping in English game

UK Anti-Doping has called for a meeting with Arsene Wenger over his concerns about drugs in football and said it would be naive to believe the sport does not have a problem.

This comes after Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger claimed he does not believe there is doping in English football, but would be happy to discuss the issue with authorities.

“I’m sure that not one club in England is trying to dope his players,” Wenger said. “I am absolutely 100 percent convinced that nobody in England tries to do that as a club. I’m convinced of it. “In football especially, maybe we look like we want to tackle the problem now. It looks to me that for a long period we didn’t.”

Although, on the surface, doping has not been a major problem in soccer as it has been for sports like athletics and cycling, there have been recent instances of players using illegal substances to gain an unfair advantage.

Meanwhile, Wenger confirmed that Arsenal striker Alexis Sanchez and playmaker Mesut Ozil were fit for Sunday’s Premier League clash with Chelsea. The league leaders have been without the influential Chilean, who has scored six league goals this season since late November after he suffered a hamstring injury.

Wenger will come up against Chelsea interim manager Guus Hiddink, whom the Frenchman believes is one of the best in the game.

“I rate him highly as a very strong manager who had an exceptional career and he alternated between club and country but he is one of the leading managers who represented this Dutch philosophy and exported it across Europe with Johan Cruyff, Louis Van Gaal, Guus Hiddink, Dick Advocaat, they were present in all the big clubs in Europe,” Wenger said. Chelsea are four points above the relegation zone but Wenger insisted the game would still be an intense affair even though his old rival, Jose Mourinho, will not be in the opposite dugout.

“It will be an intense game, with as usually what you get in the Premier League but overall I think because of the quality of the players who are on the pitch, because of what is at stake for both teams it will be a very intense battle no matter who sits on the bench,” Wenger said.

Chelsea are 19 points behind Arsenal and Wenger agreed that the champions were no longer in the title race.