Arsenal’s French manager Arsene Wenger during an EPL match against Aston Villa at the Emirates stadium. (AFP)
On the day it all began, with a game at Blackburn Rovers in October 1996, Arsene Wenger’s first win ended with a mutiny among his own players. Wenger sat at the front of the coach, filled with satisfaction for the journey back to London. At the back, the players were taking in the news that life at Arsenal was never going to be the same again. Tony Adams, Ian Wright and a few others decided enough was enough.
“We want our chocolate back,” they started chanting.
Wenger never did let them have their Mars bars. The jars of jelly babies and cola bottles that used to be on a table in the dressing-room “an orgy of sweets,” Remi Garde, Wenger’s first signing, described it went at the same time and it feels like a different world now since those days when the club’s most prolific drinkers regularly used to knock back 30 pints every weekend.
But then, a lot has changed since “Arsene Who?” was emblazoned across the London Evening Standard’s billboards (as well as an article in the newspaper on how to pronounce his name) and the Gooner fanzine carried a letter from one of its French subscribers, explaining to its readers what they should expect if they did not know much about the new man.
Gabriel Vistotsky’s words, in the temporarily renamed Le Gooner, look strikingly prescient now. “Arsene Wenger is among the best coaches in the business, high above either George Graham or Bruce Rioch. It is a risky appointment but if he succeeds Arsenal (and English football in general) will be better off because of him.” Even so, looking through that “Walking in a Wengerland” edition it is clear nobody is getting carried away. As the editorial states: “No matter how many videos he has watched, or telephone conversations he has had with Stewart Houston, will prepare him for the combined talents of David Hillier, Eddie McGoldrick and Steve Morrow.”
What has happened since then can be fitted into two parts. First, the glory years, as Wenger set about dismantling the image of boring, boring Arsenal, revolutionising the club with his sophisticated touch. “Lots of football managers have honeymoon periods,” the writer, actor and Arsenal fan Tom Watt, says. “By the end of Wenger’s, he had won the Double. His success was astonishing and instant.” The Double was repeated in 2002. Two more FA Cups followed in the next three years. Plus, that historic season of the Invincibles in 2003-04, now recognised in a series of framed letters upstairs at Arsenal’s training ground.
“WWWWDDWWWDWWWDDWDWWDWWWWWWWWWDWDWDDDWW”. Not a single “L” in sight.
The second part comes in the period, post-2005, when the old magic has not quite been there, and Wenger’s brilliance has made way for something more inglorious at times. They have been mixed, often difficult, times, resulting in Jose Mourinho’s callous broadside about “a specialist of failure,” and it has not been easy, in the worst moments, seeing Wenger under attack, as the crowd has turned and it has felt like the first T on the “In Arsene We Trust” banner might be removed.
But it has been an epic, anachronistic run. A manager can have periods of good and bad form, just like the players, but as a feat of longevity Wenger’s 1,000th game as Arsenal’s manager to be clocked up, just like his 500th, at Chelsea tomorrow can be added to the already thick portfolio of evidence that he is one of the greats of his business.
At one point after Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement last summer, Wenger had been in charge for longer than the other 19 Premier League managers put together. His team have qualified for the Champions League in each of the last 16 years, and made it out of the group stages on 14 successive occasions. Yes, it will probably be a permanent frustration they have never actually won the damn thing. Yet don’t overlook the fact that, over the last 10 years, a Premier League table of transfer business would put Arsenal fourth from bottom, with an average net yearly spend of 1.6mn. Only Newcastle, Crystal Palace and Everton have spent less. Chelsea’s average is 52.5mn, Manchester City’s 46.1mn and Manchester United’s 18.6mn.
More than anything, Wenger has always wanted to do things the right way. That might not always have been apparent when the red cards fluttered like confetti and his famously selective eyesight became one of the sport’s running jokes, but Wenger’s commitment has always been about playing with style and panache, wanting the ball, and knowing the right thing to do with it.
Wenger had taken over a team famed for winning 1-0 and it might surprise a few people that he has won a greater percentage of games by that score (10.5 per cent) than Graham (10.2 per cent).
There is a reason Ferguson took against his new rival, and it probably had nothing to do with the fact Wenger shunned all that clinking of post-match wine glasses. Ferguson, put bluntly, felt threatened.
The problem here, maybe, is that all these memories are from at least a decade ago. Wenger has certainly made plenty of mistakes since that last FA Cup in 2005. “A genius, albeit a flawed one,” Adams describes him. He can be stubborn beyond belief, infuriatingly so, refusing to bend for anyone, and there will always be that sense he should have been bolder in the transfer market. But he will never budge. Not at 64. “We do not buy superstars,” Wenger said. “We make them.” Mesut Ozil was the exception to the rule.
He is a great ambassador for Arsenal and there is one thing that is always apparent: his fixation for football. He wants to talk about the sport, rather than all the fluff that goes around it, and that is when he is at his happiest. Some football people become tired and cynical, just as someone who works in a chocolate factory might eventually want something different to taste. Not Wenger. His face still lights up when he discusses an outstanding goal or moment of skill.
The most important part is that Wenger turns out teams that play football as it is meant to be. A personal memory is of a game at Elland Road in November 2003, in the midst of that record 49-game unbeaten run. Leeds were blitzed with four goals inside the opening 50 minutes. Two from Thierry Henry, one each from Robert Pirs and Gilberto Silva. It was an attacking masterclass and their opponents were flattered, greatly, to get away with 4-1.
At Blackburn, that afternoon, the newspapers did not seem entirely convinced. Wright scored the goals in a 2-0 win but the Observer’s match report noted that Wenger “ought to be concerned with the regularity with which his new charges surrendered possession”.
These days, if Arsenal are to fail, that is virtually never the problem. Kevin Whitcher, editor of the Gooner, sums it up well. “The manager’s legacy is some wonderful football, numerous trophies, and the move to a stadium that has set the club up financially for the challenges of the future. Recent seasons have been less fruitful but there is no question his contribution to Arsenal’s history will be remembered fondly by all who witnessed his most successful sides.”