“Arsenal have won that advantage, nobody gave it to them. By playing fantastic football and by winning matches and by winning trophies, they won that respect that the opponent has for them.”

“I'm not a defender of old or new football managers. I believe in good ones and bad ones, those that achieve success and those that don't.”

“Money does not guarantee success.”

“Facing the press is not easy, but because you have to go, you have to try to take a lot of positive things for yourself from these face-to-face meetings.”

“The team is completely close. Anything you say outside, there is no chance it will go inside. So the team is really strong and compact. We know what we want and how to achieve it on the pitch.”

“I always say that I need competition, and I need competition every week, and in Spain, I was at an amazing club, but I had four matches a year: Barcelona v Real Madrid, Real Madrid v Barcelona, and after that, we'd win 4-0, 5-0, 4-1, 6-1.”

“Football is a game about feelings and intelligence.”

“For me, your real age is not the age on your ID. That's just a date when you were born.”

“I was nine or 10 years old and my father was sacked on Christmas Day. He was a manager, the results had not been good, he lost a game on December 22 or 23. On Christmas Day, the telephone rang and he was sacked in the middle of our lunch.”

“At the very least we should be given a bit of credit and a little bit of space, and maybe the media should think we could help them discover why English teams do not win European competitions.”

“Arsenal have won that advantage, nobody gave it to them. By playing fantastic football and by winning matches and by winning trophies, they won that respect that the opponent has for them.”