Former Gunners physio Gary Lewin says he’ll kick any Arsenal player that goes down when his new side West Ham play them.
Lewin first joined Arsenal in 1978, as a goalkeeper for the youth team. But after being released four years later, he trained in physiotherapy, before returning to the Gunners in 1986 as the first-team physio.
He held that position for 22 years, before leaving to take over with England in 2008. Now, Lewin is with the Hammers, and told the Standard that it’ll be a new experience to face his former side.
“I’m not sure what to expect really. I still have a lot of friends over there at Arsenal, my cousin, Colin, is the physio there now. If an Arsenal player goes down injured tonight, though, I’ll kick him – make sure he stays down! It’s about us winning,” he said.
Lewin went on to talk about Arsène Wenger, and how the game has changed in the decades since he first started working in football: “He (Wenger) transformed the way players trained, prepared and behaved off the pitch. That also coincided with an influx of foreign players such as Dennis Bergkamp.
“You really can’t underestimate the difficulty of playing in the Premier League, mentally and physically. You can’t hide in any game and it definitely has an influence on our job. We’re going into a period now where we have to play ten games in 36 days so your whole focus has to be recovery.
“When I first started, the only investigation we could do was an x-ray. Now we have CT scans, MRI scans, ultra sound scans, isotope bone scans. We used to keep playing them until they broke. Now we can stop then before they break completely.”
Arsenal know all too well about the impact that the Premier League can have on players’ fitness, considering how many past and present have suffered long-term injuries with the club. Even today, Santi Cazorla and Aaron Ramsey are sitting on the sidelines, as their regular injury problems rear their heads again.
Fortunately, the size of the Gunners’ squad at the moment has eased the pressure a bit, with completely different sides playing in the Premier League, Europe and domestic cups.So, with any luck, there won’t be too many players lying on the turf on Wednesday night for Lewin to kick.