Arsene Wenger accepts sanctioning the sale of captain Robin van
Persie to Manchester United was a "massive gamble", but has faith his
team can recover to mount a successful Barclays Premier League campaign.
Holland
international Van Persie has finalised a ?24million switch to Old
Trafford, having earlier in the summer announced he would not be signing
a new deal with the Gunners.
"The reality is when the player
doesn't want to stay you have two ways: you either force him to stay or
you accept the reality and you let him go. I have chosen the second
solution," said Wenger. "I know it is a massive challenge and a massive
gamble I took."
He added: "We have the quality to deal with the
problem we have, and at the end of the day I can talk and talk and talk
but we can only show it on the pitch now."
Van Persie is the
latest of Wenger's key men to move on following last summer's departures
of Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri - with Alex Song the next possible
transfer amid reports of a £15million bid from Barcelona.
While
the manner of Van Persie's exit may not sit well with many Arsenal fans -
following his carefully worded summer statement questioning the
direction of the club which stood by him during injury-plagued spells on
the sidelines - Wenger maintains it is now time for everyone to look to
the future as he prepares for Saturday's season opener against
Sunderland.
He added: "Time heals all things and of course at the
moment people are hurt, which I understand, but what is important for us
is to focus on the season in front of us. Players have gone, life goes
on and the football club is 125 years old and other big players have
left this club and we have always gone from season to season in a strong
way."
While Wenger may not want to go on the record over his
personal thought on the saga, there remains a sense of having been let
down by the Dutchman, whom he brought to Arsenal as a raw talent in May
2004.
Publicly, though, the Gunners boss maintains people should
remember what Van Persie contributed on the pitch, plundering 30 league
goals last season to fire them into third place.
"We lose a great
player, a world-class player, I don't deny that, it is a massive
challenge to replace him, so we have to be even more of a team and work
even more together to compensate that loss," he said. "However, we have
lost world-class players before and we always survived."
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