Wenger – Guardiola is a big manager

Arsene Wenger has praised Pep Guardiola ahead of Arsenal’s UEFA Champions League group stage fixture with Bayern Munich.

Guardiola has enjoyed huge success at both Barcelona and Bayern Munich and now the Spaniard is focusing on winning the Champions League this season with Munich. His side are currently undefeated in the Bundesliga and Wenger has praised Guardiola’s philosophy as the main reason for this success.

His teams always play positively and always attack, he has a very positive mentality and a very positive approach in terms of football. I think that’s why he fits well to Bayern. He’s become a very big manager.

As a player, Guardiola was also highly successful and won seven La Liga titles with Barcelona and Wenger has revealed that he came close to signing the Spaniard.

He wanted to play under me, yes, I met him and he wanted to play for Arsenal. He was already 30 or 31 at the time I think.

He went to Italy afterwards and I had players at the time like Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit, who were very young and played for the national team. At that time, he already showed a big personality.

Bayern Munich sit at the top of their UEFA Champions League group while Arsenal rest at the bottom. Therefore, Arsene Wenger will be hoping that his own footballing philosophy will overcome that of Guardiola and see his side pick up their second win of the season in Europe and give their hopes of progressing into the knockout stage a real boost.