17 February 2023 , 13:14
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Ray Parlour has revealed Arsenal players were forced to have their wisdom teeth removed during Arsene Wenger's time in charge.
Wenger, who was Arsenal's manager between 1996 and 2018, transformed English football by introducing new training methods, diets, tactics and overseas stars. The revolution brought success, as Wenger's side won 17 trophies - including three Premier League titles.
Perhaps his most intriguing idea was removing wisdom teeth. According to Parlour, Wenger made the midfielder and other players do this because the teeth would cause "bad blood" to enter the body when they were pushing through, which led to fitness issues.
Parlour told talkSPORT: "If you had your wisdom teeth - you might laugh at this... when they start playing up a little bit and pushing through, it would put bad blood into your body and you'd get little niggles. So a lot of the players had their wisdom teeth out.
"I promise you now, that really affected your body... I had mine out and I was getting - not where I was missing games - but you know when you're missing a couple of training sessions? I just felt a bit tired. I had my wisdom teeth out and after that [I improved]."
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Parlour added: "Freddie Ljungberg had them out, I had them out. After that, I didn't get those niggles. I promise you now, it really helped me out. I was training every day."
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Parlour's co-presenter Alan Brazil, who played for Manchester United and Scotland during his playing days, did not believe his talkSPORT colleague. "I'm not having this," uttered Brazil, who also represented the likes of Tottenham, Ipswich and Coventry.
Wenger's unique methods made an immediate impact at Highbury. Arsenal won a Premier League and FA Cup double within 19 months of his appointment after failing to finish any higher than fourth during the five seasons that proceeded his tenure.
Wenger reinvigorated the careers of David Seaman, Lee Dixon, Nigel Winterburn, Steve Bould, Tony Adams, Ian Wright and Parlour, and he also added some star quality to the squad. His early signings included Marc Overmars, Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit.
Much has been made of Wenger changing the diets of his players. Wenger once recalled: "I changed a few habits of the players, which isn't easy in a team with an average age of 30 years - at the first match the players were chanting, 'We want our Mars bars!
"At half-time, I asked my physio Gary Lewin, 'Nobody is talking, what's wrong with them?' He replied, 'They're hungry.' I hadn't given them their chocolate before the game. It was funny."
When asked about Wenger's diet, Wright once said: "No salt, no anything, all we could do was drink water and eat... like the chicken was literally just boiled and it looked just wrong. Everything was just for fuel. We couldn’t have tea, we couldn’t have anything."