Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has hit out at 'wrong information' intended to 'harm' following reports the club had opened talks over a contract extension.
The Gunners host Bayern Munich in the first leg of their Champions League showdown on Tuesday night just a few days after crashing out of the FA Cup at home to npower Championship Blackburn.
Reports on Monday morning suggested that negotiations had already started with Wenger over a new deal, his current set to expire in the summer of 2014. However, Wenger, 63, said: "That is the wrong information and I work for 16 years in England and I think I deserve a bit more credit than wrong information that has only one intention: to harm."
He went of: "If it is good information which comes from nowhere it is all right, but this is wrong information that comes from nowhere and it is completely wrong."
Wenger then became involved in a heated exchange with a journalist, adding: "I look at you not because you give information, I do not know if it is you, I do not know where the information comes from. Why do you look at me? I just thought you had given this information out.
"Here this is a pre-match conference for the Champions League, if you want to talk about Saturday, that press conference has been made after the game. Can we get some questions about tomorrow's game, that would be very nice."
Wenger feels it is important to "take a distance" from Saturday's disappointment, where a scrappy goal from former Arsenal trainee Colin Kazim-Richards inflicted a first FA Cup defeat by lower-league opposition on his side.
He said: "We have to analyse the game. We lost to a team who had one shot at goal, it is not like we have not touched the ball in the Blackburn game. Football is about skill, intelligence and some things as well are a bit unpredictable."
Wenger stressed his team must take no notice of the negative headlines and broken cannon motifs if they are to progress over two legs against the Bundesliga giants. He said: "We play for Arsenal in the last 16 of the Champions league, we have qualified for a long, long time. What is important is not what people say it is what happens on the pitch.
"We live in a democracy of experts and opinions, but we have to live with that and cope with that and show we have the mental strength to deal with any opinion. There are a lot of experts who are not necessarily always right."
Source: PA
