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Rice: I hate being Arsenal manager

Comment: 0 September 14th, 2011 by: admin

Pat Rice, assistant manager at Arsenal, recently commented that taking the responsibilities of managing the club was not a pleasant experience.

Stepping in for the banned Arsene Wenger, Rice described the experience as stressful, aggravating and unusual given that his experience on the field always involved Wenger.

‘Did I like it? No.  It has never been one of my ambitions to be manager of a football club,’ Rice stated.

‘It was too stressful for me and extremely strange not to have the manager with me.  He is normally shouting in my ear,’ he continued.  ‘But we battled really hard and we knew it would be a hard game.’

The match saw Gunners skipper Robin van Persie make a right-foot shot to rocket the ball into the net on the 42^nd minute in a play set up by Theo Walcott.  Dortmund answered later in the match, however, with an 88^th-minute goal by Ivan Perisic.

The final whistle saw Arsenal and Dortmund at a 1-1 stalemate.

‘I don’t think many teams will beat Dortmund,’ Rice mused.  ‘Dortmund are a really good side.  No question.  From our point of view, we wanted to win the game.  We were so close.  We were very near.’

Rice had nothing but praise for van Persie’s efforts as a player and a tactician.

‘We encouraged [Robin] to be verbal on the park and off it,’ he said.  ‘He was asking me one or two things about what we could do better and I was saying one or two things which could make the team better.’

‘As for the goal, it is nothing unusual to see Robin do that.  It was a great run by Robin and a terrific ball through.’

The stand-in manager also had kind words for Perisic.

‘Their player could try that 35 of 40 times and he would hit it wide,’ he said.  ‘It was a great goal.’

Commenting on whether or not Arsenal had somehow improved on the field, Rice was nothing if not optimistic.

‘Very much so,’ Rice declared.  ‘Particularly the game on Saturday when we beat Swansea.’

 

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