Written by Jonathan Chong on Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Manager Arsène Wenger has said that he will take up the incident over the injury to striker Robin van Persie with the Dutch FA, saying that it is wrong that national teams do not look after a club's assets.

The issue has been further marred due to the mis-diagnosis from the Dutch medical team, who declared that the 26-year-old would be out for 3-6 weeks, before an Arsenal diagnosis revealed the full extent of the injury.

Wenger said: "I think we have not been told the truth by the Dutch Football Federation which is a real regret.

"I think as well if they had not made a mistake in his diagnosis he would not have gone to Serbia to get that kind of treatment.

"If we had found out the damage of his ankle he would never have been cured anyway. We will [take further action], of course."

It is another episode in the club versus country row, and Wenger is getting increasingly frustrated with the conduct of national teams towards some of his players.

He added: "We will not accept that situation to go on like that. Our players go away, they are injured, a player like Diaby goes away and is injured and you cannot even get him back because they decided to keep him. It is disrespectful to the clubs. The players come back, they are injured, they are not properly treated, it is not acceptable for the clubs.

"We pay the wages. The players are injured. For political reasons they keep the players in the squad and we have not a say, how can that work?

"And three days later you have to play a game and you have to win it. They don't care. And you pay the players. Something has to change in there.

"In every other sport it is the club who decides if the player stays in the national team when he is injured. Only in our sport it is the federation who decides to keep the player if they want to keep the player.

"Why? That means they decide they are in a better situation to treat the player than you. Then they have to pay the player at the end of the month. Then they can decide, that would be logical.

"You can do nothing because they have the rule in their favour. The French Federation decided to keep Diaby for political reasons. They knew from the first day on that he would never play for them but they didn't want to call another player up.

"So they decided to keep him and make everybody think he would play. The result? He comes back; the next day he tries to have a little run and gets a setback and we have to deal with the consequences."

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