Record-breaking Wenger unlikely to be surpassed
ARSENE WENGER will clamber ahead of Alex Ferguson tomorrow, managing his 811th Premier League game, leaving him with a record that has been 21 years in the making.
After tomorrow afternoon Wenger will be alone at the mountain. If he completes the season, and the next one, and leaves in May 2019 at the end of his contract – famous last words – he will finish on 866 Premier League matches.
But will anyone ever meet him there, not least serving so long at one club? Records are there to be broken, but even then it would be a surprise if anyone ever gets close.
Not because Wenger is the Don Bradman or Lionel Messi of managers, so gifted that it is statistically unlikely anyone could manage for as long as him. Of course they could. But because his longevity at Arsenal is not just a function of his skills, but of the political structure of the club, and of English football.
When Wenger was asked to explain his longevity at his press conference on Wednesday morning, he pointed, sounding as academic as ever, to a “conjunction of factors”.
First to the “loyalty, dedication and hard work, the sacrifice of your life” that the job demanded. Then “luck”, that he “did not miss one game in 21 years”, which means he “needs to be healthy”. And more “luck”, that he could work for a club that trusted him, “through good and bad periods”.
That last point is the key. Because Wenger’s 21 years at Arsenal makes him the last link from the time when the manager was the all-powerful position at the club, with a hand in the team, the training, the logistics, the recruitment, the contracts and all the rest of it.
When he arrived at Arsenal in 1996 most managers enjoyed that same power, but Wenger did so well with it, winning three Premier League titles in his first eight years, that he earned himself a position of more power than almost anyone else.
So while most other top clubs were transitioning to a system where the manager is one cog among many – something that Chelsea have done very successfully – Wenger only became more powerful at Arsenal.
Internal changes at Arsenal also meant that in the second half of Wenger’s reign, he has essentially become bigger than the club itself. Which is why there has been no real challenge to his position even during a long downturn in results.
When Wenger goes, he will not be replaced by anyone like him. He will be replaced by a head coach who can fit into the new system Ivan Gazidis has built. Arsenal will hope to avoid the same transitional pains that Manchester United have faced in the last few years, switching from the old model, the power vacuum it leaves, to a new one.
Now all top teams have more disposable coaches, who are unlikely to work more than five years in one job. The closest thing to an exception is Diego Simeone, arguably himself bigger than Atletico Madrid, but even he is expected to leave at the end of his current deal in 2020.
The pressures are such, at the biggest sides, that the demand for constant success and renewal means that no coach can be left as powerful again as Wenger has been.
Back in the Premier League, the average tenure of all of last season’s managers, according to the League Managers’ Association, was 2.68 years, an average dragged up by Wenger.
The league is getting less patient, with seven dismissals last season, just down from the joint-record high of 12 from the year before. Of those dismissed managers, the average tenure was just 1.31 years.
Even to look at the two other longest-servers, our two English Wenger equivalents, shows how far they are.
Sean Dyche and Eddie Howe have both been in their jobs for just over five years. When Howe returned to Bournemouth from Burnley in October 2012, Dyche replaced him there. They have both carved out a position of almost Wengerian power at their clubs, imposing an idea about how to play and building the recruitment around that.
But how long will those two last at Burnley and Bournemouth? Both managers have attracted the attentions of other clubs.
The nature of the football food chain means that smaller clubs cannot hope to keep hold of talent for long. Dyche and Howe are both level at the moment on 96 games, a mere 714 games behind.
Wenger was 47 years old when he joined Arsenal, and Howe is still just 40, giving him a headstart of sorts. But 811, and all at one club? It would take quite the conjunction of factors to get him there. (© Independent News Service)