There is pain in every departure. After 21 years, giving his club and its people some of the most inspired times of their lives, Arsène Wenger is coming to the end of his most troubled season in charge of Arsenal Football Club.
Wenger has become so steeped in Arsenal that he is practically marinated in red. But his biggest headache is not that Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United, financed by foreign billionaires and oligarchs, have overtaken Arsenal. Nor is it the sapping of confidence that might already have drained from Arsenal the opportunity to qualify for the Champions League, which Wenger had unfailingly done throughout his Arsenal tenure.
Rather, it is what is happening six kilometers down the road from Arsenal, where Tottenham Hotspur is in full gallop. Never in Wenger’s time had the Spurs topped the Gunners. Never, until now, has Tottenham so obviously been more attractive, more successful, more youthful.
Enmity between Arsenal and Tottenham goes back a hundred years to when Arsenal, formed by workers at the Royal Arsenal munitions factory, relocated to the north London patch occupied by Tottenham. There is lasting hostility, born of resentment against Arsenal encroaching on Tottenham territory. And while, through the Wenger years, the Gunners had bragging rights, the Spurs’ revival makes Arsenal look dated.
Not just Arsenal, but also Arsène. He is being made to appear past tense in his own house. His team, especially his most costly imports Mesut Özil and Alexis Sanchez, seem dispirited and disillusioned. Both are multi-millionaires, yet both appear to be holding Arsenal to ransom to double their pay.
Their agents have a case. The money-no-object giants, from Real Madrid to Manchester City, from Barcelona to Chelsea, pay more than these two earn to their stars. But Özil seemed to lose heart and Sanchez appeared to run far less after Arsenal was humbled in Europe by Bayern Munich. Losing 5-1 in Munich, and then by the same score at Arsenal’s Emirates stadium, was shocking.
Collectively, Arsenal sagged. And whatever Wenger has said or tried has not had the desired effect. His unique autonomy at the club means that the slump is his responsibility.
It matters more because the neighbours, just a bus ride away, are showing zest and panache, and doing so with fine young Brits Harry Kane and Dele Alli, combined with judicious imports like the Korean Son Heung-min and the Dane Christian Eriksen.
Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino comes from the same Argentine region as Lionel Messi. Where Wenger, 67, looks to be fading, Pochettino, 45, is rising.
The club’s fortunes turned somewhat last week in the FA Cup when Arsenal won through to the final, but Spurs lost to Chelsea. However, what matters most in England is the Premier League—and as fate has it, Arsenal visits Tottenham on April 30.
Comparisons can be invidious. The roles, even the titles of the two men, differ. When Tottenham first hired Pochettino in 2014, he was the head coach, responsible solely for preparing the team to play football matches. Wenger is, and has always been, the manager of the whole gamut from deciding which players to buy to budgeting, to advising on the stadium and even the training ground design. He instilled new training, diet, even lifestyle regimens.
It is very much 'his' Arsenal now. Having observed all this from the day he arrived, in October 1996 from Japan where he managed Nagoya Grampus Eight, one remembers him gently saying that England is an island that needed to look out towards the world.
At the time, he was the only overseas manager in the Premier League. Two decades on, he is the only club manager from that era still standing. Above and beyond results, he challenged and changed the style of play.
If the Premier League is now the best league on earth, then Monsieur Wenger was hugely influential in its transition. Back in the ‘90s, Liverpool, for example, derided the very notion that England had anything to learn. Nowadays, not only the managers, but two thirds of players in the Premier League are from abroad. Liverpool included.
Wenger wanted, and for a time achieved, a team playing as close to the beauty of Barcelona. He helped Thierry Henry blossom from an inconsistent winger into the most elegant striker the Premiership has known. He developed Dennis Bergkamp from a gifted but shy fellow into a peacock of creativity and potency. The manager inherited a solid British bulldog defence, which he protected with two of his countrymen—the intelligent Emmanuel Petit and the hugely competitive Patrick Vieira.
You might say all that is the past. And, so it is. Not even Wenger has managed to recruit or improve such a blend of spirit and strength as his 2003-04 'Invincibles', which went 49 games unbeaten. Brian Clough, the top English manager when Wenger arrived, used a comparison that would nowadays be deemed politically incorrect. “Arsenal caress a football,” Clough said, “the way I dreamed of caressing Marilyn Monroe.”
Times change. 2004 was the third, and last, time that Wenger’s Gunners dominated the league. Since then, Arsenal is best known for qualifying for the Champions League. That ensured some 50 million pounds per season extra revenue, but even in England money isn’t everything. In a broader sense, Wenger’s consistency in qualifying was achieved against Arsenal having to cut his squad while paying for the most expensive stadium in England, the 60,000-seater Emirates.
That cost £400 million, all of it from Arsenal’s own sources, and Wenger had no option but to sell important players.
Money talks in football, and without it you can be speechless. The stadium was not ill-conceived. Its cost today, and through to 2028, is endorsed by Emirates Airlines sponsorship. And with Arsenal charging the highest ticket prices in world football, the Gunners are now cash rich and independent.
However, with wealth the expectations grow. Once upon a time, Arsenal were patient with Wenger and understood why he was miserly with the club’s money. Now, though, a growing, vociferous number of the crowd blame him for what they see as mediocrity in regarding perpetual top four placings as success.
Wenger made the Albatross for his own back. He won the league thrice in his first eight seasons—indeed won the league and FA Cup double twice, in 1997-98 and 2001-02. Failure to gain the title again, in 12 long years, is exacerbated by finishing behind Tottenham this season.
The scale of criticism, at times, touches upon insolence. There are TV football “experts”, former players who have never dared become Premier League managers but feel free to dismiss Wenger as a master of style over substance.
Having coached Arsenal through more than 1,100 matches, he would admit that defence is neither his forte, nor his field of expertise. He talks of entertainment as if that is the Holy Grail. I will be honest and say that my view is that winning is addictive, but winning with style is the real attraction.
Wenger has puzzled us for months by alluding to a new two-year contract on the table for him, which he appeared reluctant to sign. His stonewalling mystified us, and seemed at odds with the reassurance his players might need, or any new players might expect before they sign.
Why would Wenger, “Mr Arsenal”, dither?
At the start of April, Ivan Gazidis, Arsenal’s chief executive since 2009, told a group of fans that any decision on Wenger’s future would be mutual. He added that the failings of the past six weeks “could be seen as a catalyst for change.” Gazidis did not elaborate, but speculation has grown that Wenger must give up some of his authority and do something he is not noted for—to delegate.
He has been reluctant to work alongside a sports director who takes care of player recruitment. And he has not taken a younger coach under his wing, perhaps to train up as his eventual successor. Wenger’s obsession is singular and total.
American Stan Kroenke, the largest shareholder (67 per cent) of Arsenal has great admiration for Wenger. If disaffection is coming, it might be from Josh Kroenke, the 36-year-old heir to his father’s sports empire.
Kroenke Jr is closer to Thierry Henry’s age than to Wenger’s. The heir to the business and the former footballer have been to basketball together—and who would not enjoy the company of the loquacious Henry, such a star of the Arsenal glory years?
Reports suggest that the Arsenal board is actively seeking a football director alongside the manager, and that Kroenke Jr suggested Henry's name.
Wenger had previously appeared receptive to Henry as a coach to Arsenal’s youth team. However, instead of joining Wenger as an apprentice, Henry opted for a part-time role assisting the Belgian national team coach, Roberto Martinez.
Mr Wenger, who once brought out the best in Henry, appears to be mulling over an offer that requires him to change and adapt, or go. He has said that “whether it be here or somewhere else” he will coach next season. Retirement is not on his mind, and it seldom does appeal to the veteran soccer managers.
Alex Ferguson waited until he was 71 before he called time on his 27 years at Manchester United. Guy Roux went 44 years, as player and then coach at Auxerre, before heart surgery prompted his retirement. And Jupp Heynckes pronounced his own retirement before winning the treble of German league and cup, and the Champions League, in his last season at Bayern Munich.
Ask any of the three, and they will tell you they quit too soon. Management is not a job, it is in their bones.
