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ARSENAL: Niedzwiecki - I learned at Highbury

/noticias.info/ By Mo Khan

Eddie Niedzwiecki was once entrusted with nurturing Arsenal’s future stars but, on Saturday, he returns to Highbury for the first time in the opposition dug-out.

The Blackburn coach, 46, joined Arsenal in December 2000 as Reserve team manager following the tragic death of Gunners’ legend George Armstrong. He served them well, bringing through many of the young talents in the first-team squad when the two teams meet tomorrow.

Then in September 2004, the opportunity arose for Niedzwiecki to join the first team set up at Ewood Park alongside Mark Hughes — someone he’d worked with in the Welsh national set-up.

It was a difficult decision for the former international goalkeeper.

“It was a huge wrench to leave Arsenal because I had such a great time there,” he told Arsenal.com.

“It’s a massive, massive club and I had a job there working with wonderful people and lots and lots of really top talent. I learnt so much there but life moves on.

“I left to work with the first team and for the title of first-team coach at Blackburn. I just felt it was the right time, the right progression for my career.”

Niedzwiecki, who made over 300 first-team appearances for Wrexham and Chelsea before a knee injury cut short his playing career, says he has been putting the coaching techniques and methods he picked up under Wenger at Arsenal, into practise at Ewood Park.

“I learned so much under Arsène Wenger and the rest of the guys there — Pat (Rice), Bora (Primorac) — it was fantastic. I must admit I try to bring a lot of similarities to the work we do here from what I learnt at Arsenal.”

With Arsenal due to vacate Highbury at the end of the current campaign, this may be Niedzwiecki’s last visit to the famous old ground that has come to mean so much to him.

“It’s a great setting and a great football stadium,” he mused. “The thing about Highbury is quite simple — and Don Howe told me this — once you’ve worked for Arsenal, you’ll end up calling them ‘The Arsenal’ — it left such an impression on me the four years I spent there, it was incredible.

“I was actually very fortunate as when I was at Chelsea, it was our first game when we got promoted in 1983/84. It was a morning kick-off at Highbury and was a really terrific event. I’ve always had a special affection for Highbury to be perfectly honest and that obviously grew in the time I spent there.”

Niedzwiecki explains he is at Blackburn for the long haul — as he and Hughes look build on a solid start to their tenure in Lancashire.

“We have a very, very difficult job in trying to push this club up and forwards onto the higher echelons of the Premier League,” he said.

But in the more immediate future, Niedzwiecki must find a way of stopping Arsenal’s all-time record goalscorer, Thierry Henry, on Saturday. A player Niedzwiecki simply refers to as ‘a very special talent.’

So what plans do he and Hughes have in place to nullify the Frenchman’s threat?

“I’ll bring down some handcuffs,” concluded Niedzwiecki with a smile. notas_de_prensa_archivo