Ex-Gunner Pires mulls unfinished business

Villarreal playmaker Robert Pires insists he will harbour neither pity nor nostalgia when he seeks to sink former club Arsenal in their Champions League quarter-final first-leg on Tuesday.

“I didn’t come here (to Spain) on holidays, I came here to win a title,” said the 35-year-old Frenchman, who spent six seasons at Arsenal before joining Villarreal in June 2006.

Pires has something of an axe to grind as during the 2006 Champions League final against Barcelona Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger substituted him after ‘keeper Jens Lehman was sent off before the Catalans came from behind to win 2-1.

“It killed me,” remembers Pires, who won two Premiership titles and two FA Cups during his time in North London.

Worse still Wenger then off-loaded Pires to Villarreal, saying he could no longer guarantee the delicate right-sided midfielder a place in his side.

The two factors make for painful memories as Pires eyes revenge in the home-leg at Villarreal’s El Madrigal stadium on Tuesday, his first game against Arsenal since being ditched.

“He (Wenger) called me and asked me how I was and I told him not to worry, that this was one game for which I’d be really ready for, physicaly fit for,” said Pires, who said he still has a few friends in the Arsenal dressing room.

The plot for the last-eight clash is further thickened by the fact Arsenal beat Villarreal in the 2006 semi-final, a clash Pires remembers as a lucky win for the Gunners.

A defeat which also remains an open wound at Villarreal, according to the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000 winner Pires.

Known as the ‘Yellow Submarine’ due to their yellow strip Pires feels Villarreal, currently fourth in the Spanish championship, have the necessary artillery to take the Gunners down this time.

“We’ve got one of the best squads in Spain,” he explained.

Back in 2006 Arsenal won the home leg 1-0 before surviving a missed penalty to draw 0-0 in Spain and set up the final against Barcelona in Paris, where however the Gunners ran out of luck.