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Gunners chief regrets Chelsea chase

06/10/2005

Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood admits that Arsenal's determination to pursue Chelsea over the Ashley Cole tapping-up affair was not his doing.

The outspoken Gunners chief revealed that he would have preferred the north London club to have "handled it differently" when they demanded the authorities take action after the England left-back was caught in a clandestine meeting with Chelsea bosses in January.

In the end Cole, Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho and the west London club as a whole were fined, although the left-back and Portuguese manager both had their fines reduced on appeal.

But Hill-Wood revealed that it was other members of the Gunners board who forced the issue of taking their London rivals to task and that he has "no ill-feeling towards Chelsea".

"I'd rather we had handled it differently," he told the Daily Telegraph.

"But the majority of the board felt we had to do something. These matters are not voted on. We didn't agree and I went along quietly. We know this sort of [tapping up] goes on all the time. All clubs do it, though Chelsea were rather blatant about it."

Hill-Wood went on to praise current Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger and insisted he would rather have the man who has never overseen a Premiership finish lower than second at Arsenal than Chelsea boss Mourinho.

He also promised that the Frenchman would have money available to spend on new faces in the January transfer window if he found players he wanted.

"We have money in the bank and Wenger can buy if he wants to," Hill-Wood said.

"But Arsene Wenger is not going to buy players to make up numbers. He wants players who can play in the Champions League and, apart from [Aleksander Hleb, who was Wenger's only major summer signing] he has not found anyone."

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