Wenger determined to shrug off Arsenal injuries and secure much-needed win

Allardyce, who will be without injured duo Sebastian Larsson and Jermain Defoe, said: “I’ve never won at Arsenal with any of my teams – drawn a few, but never won”.

‘I’ve always had a huge amount of respect for him.

This weekend, Sunderland are not only looking to end a 22-year wait for a victory in the Gunners’ back yard, but Allardyce is also looking to register his first ever win there himself.

“That’s a massive bonus because I did not expect that when I came here”, said Allardyce.

The then Bolton manager famously got under the Frenchman’s skin as he guided his side to a series of unlikely positive results against the Gunners, and admitted in his recently published autobiography that he enjoyed winding up a man he described as having “an air of arrogance”.

“If I have a drink with Arsene (after the game), I want to talk about the fact we played so well, and does he have any players he might lend me in January?” I think it was just wind-up stuff that we all get up to.

“There’s not a lot that actually surprises me today”. Their relationship is now “amicable” but Allardyce makes no apologies for the references to Arsenal’s manager in his memoir.

“There’s a reaction to what people say and you perhaps don’t keep your cool as best you should have done”. ‘What particularly interested me was how well the opposite manager told you that you’d played when they beat you, and how bad you played when you beat them and your tactics were not right. The last time I wound a rival manager up was Rafa [Benítez] when I was at Blackburn. “It seems that he has a good recovery time from this type of injury… so it doesn’t look as serious as first thought”, Allardyce said at his pre-match news conference on Thursday.

“With the rest, you challenge them to see if any of them can get to double figures”.

“That’s why he gets that particular criticism, I think – because of the Invincibles when they went a whole season without losing a game and they won the title and won the cup, and got to the final of the Champions League”.