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Extra: Boss on Guardiola and technology

Read extra quotes from Arsène Wenger's press conference ahead of the Southampton game. For more headlines, visit our Digest page.

on Alexis and Ozil’s contracts…
We’ll deal with that later in the season. At the moment we’re focusing on the present and the immediate. We’ll deal with that at the end of May.

on trialling video technology…
I’ve always been in favour because what you want is as many right decisions as possible. Technology can contribute to that and the next should be goal or not goal and offsides.

on video for penalty decisions, yellow cards and red cards…
Penalty decisions yes, that’s less obvious. Sometimes even on television we have different opinions. The offside can be decided because mathematically there is always a solution there.

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on whether he’d be okay for English clubs to trial it…
Yes.

on if he’d encourage Guardiola to come to Premier League…
Yes. Welcome to the competition. Personally I don’t like the fact that the managers come out so early for what they will do, because it’s not necessarily good for their own team, nor for the speculation about the managers who are going through a little bit of a difficult patch. But after, of course. We want this league to be the best league in the world. We want as well to find the right balance. The Premier League wants to be the best in the world but you need 40 to 50 per cent of foreign managers but as well give some chances to local managers, like Howe from Bournemouth who now comes out. You do not want to kill that. You do not want the Premier League to become exclusively for foreign managers, even if I am one! It’s important to have the balance right. They bring different ideas but you want as well a local culture.

on Guardiola coming to England…
You look to know much more than I do, but we might know the same things!

on whether he will be a success…
I think he is of course a top-quality manager, nobody would dispute that. Not so much for what he has won already, because Bayern won before, Barcelona still wins today, but I think about the positive attitude he has towards the game and the fact he wants his team to play football in a positive way. I respect that highly.

on meeting Jeremy Corbyn…
Yeah it’s true.

on if Corbyn hugged Wenger…
I don’t exactly remember, but we were at the same table just before England v France. I noticed that he was an Arsenal supporter and we spoke exclusively about football, not about politics!

on Mourinho’s departure…
I think a lot has been made on that, and I do not need to add anything. I do not want anyone to lose their job, my personal feelings on that front is that it is always sad when someone loses their job.

on always getting on well with his players…
I am not sure all the players would agree with you on that! Every manager has his own way to work, with his own personality and you can only be successful if you work with your own personality. It would be interesting for you to work for six months in a club and see how we it works. It should be part of an education of a journalist to go into a top club for six months. It would be very interesting.

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