When you step up as a young talent, you need to challenge the old lads.

You know what you have achieved and what you have been through.

The first time in my career I thought it makes no sense anymore, that I'll retire.

Arsene Wenger was always the kind of manager whose belief in his team's qualities was steady as a rock and who approached matters with never-ending patience.

I was fortunate to play under Thomas Schaaf at Bremen. And I played for Arsene Wenger. So I always felt, let's say, more responsible than others towards the manager and his succession.

Never tackle, never go down, we've heard it over and over again. You have to try to keep Messi away from the goal and block him with multiple players while being as close to him as possible. He is too quick, too fast, too intense with the ball.

If Messi has the ball, he is fantastic to watch and difficult to stop. You have to double up on him, triple up on him even, stay with him constantly to block his way to the goal.

The heritage of Arsenal, to believe in our academy and to really promote our academy. That's important and that's why I am here as well. I wouldn't waste my time just to know that we are not having successes here at Arsenal.

Being in a career and going from highlight to highlight and playing a lot of matches you go through it and think it's normal when you play in front of 60,000 and you almost want to vomit in front of every game.

In certain situations, players should protect themselves by not losing track of the most important things in their job.

In the moments before a game starts my stomach turns around as if I had to vomit. Then I have to choke so violently until my eyes tear.

Arsenal has always been special for me.

If there is a really good player at U16 level who disrespects the coach, if you then say: 'You can go somewhere else then. That is not how we do things here.' That would be powerful.

Mentality is a big part of every game, when you take the initiative and when you drop.

No matter how much striking power you have got, you need to have a sense of defensive compactness from everyone.

I was talented at a young age, but I still had to grow and develop further.

I want players to think: 'OK, this has happened now, what is next for me?' That's a very big target because what are academies about nowadays? Is it really just to find one or two players? But what happened to the others? I'm very, very interested in that.

Everyone says I should really savour the last year, play as much as possible, really soak everything in. I'd most like to sit on the bench, or, even better, in the stands.

My home town called me a citizen of honour. So I'm a special citizen now.

When I played for Hannover I had several offers, also - as I have been told - from Hamburg, Bremen and Bayern. Back then I already was a German international and Bayern would have loved to have the complete German national team.

Arsenal is one of the top teams in Europe and I have been looking out for Arsenal since I got my first jersey when I was ten or 12.

Obviously, everyone looks at whether we bring young footballers into the first team, that's one of the goals. But I wouldn't discard someone who is successful in life, that's big. The hall of fame in the academy should be a wide variety of stories.

Some days you realise that everything is a burden, both physically and mentally. That it's not about fun, but you have to deliver without a doubt. Even if you are injured.

You learn a lot from defeats. As well, you need to learn from victories.