At the weekend Ryan Giggs gave an interview in which he spoke about how he got up for games against Arsenal by telling himself a load of nonsense.

24 Jan 2000:  Patrick Vieira of Arsenal shields the ball from Ryan Giggs of Manchester United during the FA Carling Premier League match against Manchester United Arsenal played at Old Trafford in Manchester, England. The game finished in a 1-1 draw.  Credit: Alex Livesey /Allsport
24 Jan 2000: Patrick Vieira of Arsenal shields the ball from Ryan Giggs of Manchester United during the FA Carling Premier League match against Manchester United Arsenal played at Old Trafford in Manchester, England. The game finished in a 1-1 draw. Credit: Alex Livesey /Allsport

Of course, his quotes were easy to pull out of context, which is exactly what I did when I tweeted:

The response from Arsenal fans was brutal with most of them sticking to the same theme.

Can you guess what it was?

https://twitter.com/catyeboah/status/1109670364416753664

https://twitter.com/RadiCoolArtist/status/1109470315241979905

https://twitter.com/AmiAFCxo/status/1109466988496277504

This is only a tiny sample, there are far more in the replies and more quoted tweets I haven’t included here if you want a laugh.

For the record, Giggs full quote was, “I didn’t like Arsenal. I didn’t like Vieira ’cos he was dirty and got away with murder. I didn’t like Petit because he had long hair. I didn’t like Bergkamp.

“I didn’t like Pires even though when you meet him now he’s actually dead nice. I wouldn’t even look at them, didn’t know them and didn’t want to. I wouldn’t allow myself to rate any of them.

“Berkgamp? Nah, I told myself he wasn’t as good as Eric Cantona. I wasn’t really that kind of person. It wasn’t really me. But you had to get that in your head, that intense dislike. It was pure motivation. But deep down we knew. They were top drawer and that rivalry was everything to us. Deeper even than Liverpool at that time.”