Arsene Wenger signed a ton of players when he was the manager of Arsenal.
The legendary Frenchman is often credited for being a visionary. He revolutionised English football back in the day, and his eye for talent was better than anyone else’s at the time.
Wenger signed some incredible players for very little money and brought immense success to Arsenal. He will forever be a legend of the club for everything he did.
However, there were a few rare occasions when even Wenger got some signings wrong. Ray Parlour hilariously described one such incident a few years ago.
Dennis Bergkamp and Ray Parlour’s prank led to Arsene Wenger signing Igors Stepanovs for Arsenal
Arsenal signed Igors Stepanovs in September 2000 from Latvian side Skonto.
A central defender who was 24 at the time, nobody had really heard of Stepanovs in England and it was a big surprise to see him be signed.
Before landing him, however, Wenger had him on trial during pre-season to get a closer look at him. He wanted to find out if he was good enough.
Parlour has revealed that he and Dennis Bergkamp made a bet on the bench to wind Martin Keown up by praising Stepanovs every time he was on the ball.
They knew Keown would bite, but what they didn’t realise was that Wenger would fall for the prank too and end up buying the Latvian.
Parlour shared the hilarious story on talkSPORT in September 2021: “We were on a pre-season tour and Martin Keown, you could wind him up a little bit. I love Martin to death. He’s the hardest player I played with, any problem we had on the pitch, Martin would sort it. But, we used to wind him up big-time.
“We had this trialist come in at centre-half. He (Keown) was probably thinking ‘we don’t need another centre-half, I’m not going to play!’ So, me and Dennis Berkgamp had a wind up.
“We were all on the bench. I had the first half to try and wind him up and he had the second half. We had £50 on it. So every pass Igors did, it could be five yards, I was clapping him and saying ‘what a player this guy is! Fantastic!’
“Half-time whistle goes and Martin hasn’t bitten yet. In the second half, Igors hits this ball, I think he miss-kicked it, it went to one of our players 20 yards away.
“Bergkamp stood up and went ‘what a player’ and started clapping. ‘I’ve played against some great centre-halves and I wouldn’t want to play against this guy’.
“All of a sudden Martin says: ‘He isn’t that good. He should have been pushing up, he’s dropping off too deep’. He bit, big time. So, Dennis Bergkamp won the money.
“Two weeks later, I get back to the training ground and he is sitting there, Igors Stepanovs. Wenger’s probably been listening to Bergkamp going ‘what a player’ and he’s thought, £100,000, we’ll buy him.”
Igors Stepanovs’ Arsenal career
Stepanovs was never going to be a regular at Arsenal – he was only brought in as a backup.
In his four years on the Gunners’ books, the Latvian defender played 31 games under Wenger in all competitions. He even featured in the Champions League.
Stepanovs, however, will be remembered by many Arsenal fans for having a really poor game against Manchester United in February 2001.
Arsenal ended up losing that game 6-1 – five of those goals came in the first half. Dwight Yorke scored a hat-trick in that fixture.
Stepanovs did, however, win the Premier League title in the following season and became the only Latvian player to ever do so.
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