Unai Emery famously banned fruit juice at Arsenal… he'll be furious over the 'hippy crack' party

Or to put it another way, two steps forward on the pitch, one giant stride backwards in the West End.


And just when it was all sunshine and roses around Arsenal again, they find embarrassing dark clouds gathering.

Not, this time, through any cock-ups and clangers wearing the shirt but through The Sun’s revelations that several first team stars inhaled hippy crack at a pre-season party.

One of Unai Emery’s first moves when he took over in the summer was to ban non-freshly squeezed fruit juice from the training ground.

It surely never crossed his mind for a single second that he would have to extend that to nitrous oxide.


Not at their London Colney base, admittedly. But then again, not even those Gunners loons pictured out of it at exclusive club Tape would be that stupid.

Laughing gas it may be, but there won’t have been many smiles when he read the riot act as they arrived this morning.

There will doubtless be a few out there who can’t wait to point out that what those Arsenal players were doing isn’t actually illegal.

The irony of English society is that if they’d be snapped having a few pints, there would probably have been a bigger outcry from many.

Those holier than thou sorts questioning what sort of example professional athletes were setting to their young, impressionable supporters.

There will be a few, too, who shrug it off and insist no harm was done because they’ve just rattled up 20 games unbeaten, and actually claim it helped team bonding.

Well never has a bonding session blown up in so many faces quite so emphatically.

Yes, I know nitrous oxide may is hardly on the Class A list, but we’re talking role models here.

Thousands of kids will copy their every move. That’s fine if they’re trying stepovers or rabonas, but gulping hippy crack certainly ain’t.

It has already been linked to at least 17 deaths, so the potential repercussions don’t need spelling out.

You can only hope Emery blistered the paint of those training ground walls when he hauled in those players involved. And let’s be honest, there were plenty of them.

The Gunners manager has shown that when it comes to footballing decisions, he is as hard line as they come.

Mesut Ozil has discovered that already, while he’s not afraid to drag off anyone not pulling their weight on the pitch.

Reputations clearly hold little sway with him when it comes to doing the right thing.

And the right thing certainly isn’t the rank stupidity of getting out of it on nitrous oxide.

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