I have been his fiercest critic but now I say: Thanks, Arsene
IWAS sitting on a plane to Scotland when one of the crew rushed over and exclaimed: ‘Piers, have you heard? HE’S OUT!’
I didn’t need to be told who ‘he’ was. The excitement on his face told its own story. This was clearly a fellow Arsenal fan and the ‘he’ was clearly Arsene Wenger.
Our club’s longest-serving manager was leaving after 22 years. If someone had told me a decade or so ago that I, or any Arsenal fan, would be remotely joyful at this news, I’d have thought they were bonkers.
But sadly, the vast majority will share my sense of relief at Wenger’s departure. It is the right decision.
In truth, he should have gone years ago, when his genius began to wane as younger, more dynamic rivals emerged to beat him with monotonous regularity.
I first called for Wenger to resign in a Sportsmail column on November 24, 2008, after a 3-0 beating by Manchester City.
‘Wenger looked like a deathrow hbe inmate waiting to be taken to the electric chair,’ r,’ I wrote. ‘Arsenal are disintegrating ea before my eyes as a major club. It’s time Arsene e Wenger and Arsenal parted d company.’
They didn’t, things carried d on disintegrating.
For a while, Wenger was s able to cling to excuses s about lacking the money to o win against billionaire backed clubs such as Chelsea, Manchester United and City.
But for the past seven years, Arsenal have had an owner just as rich as Roman Abramovich in Stan Kroenke — and nothing has changed.
Last year was Wenger’s worst: fifth in the Premier League and failure to qualify lify for the Champions League for the first time. This season has been no better. We’re sixth, out of both cups, and all that’s left to play for is the Europa League, a competition no big club wants to be in.
As performances have fallen, so have the crowds. The Emirates has resembled a half-empty graveyard in recent games.
In the end, there is one statistic that says it all: Sir Alex Ferguson has won five Premier League titles since Wenger last won it, and Fergie has been retired for five years.
It’s been so sad to see the slow, inexorable demise. Arsenal legend Ian Wright put it well recently: ‘Watching Wenger now is like witnessing the ageing Muhammad Ali against Larry Holmes or the Brazilian Ronaldo when he got fat. The problem with Arsene is that there is no one in his corner prepared to throw in the towel.’
Well, now he’s done it himself. Or perhaps he was urged to by board members at Arsenal. It doesn’t really matter. Wenger’s going and it’s the end of one of the longest and most extraordinary reigns by any manager.
It’s a bitter-sweet moment, even for me. Before the comparative misery of recent years — just three (devalued) FA Cups in 14 years is not a return ‘big club’ fans paying the highest ticket prices in Europe should accept — Wenger was a god to all Arsenal fans.
We won the Double in his first full season in 1998, and again in 2002. Then in 2004, we went through a League season unbeaten.
The Invincibles were a dazzling side, bursting with incredible talents such as Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Robert Pires, and a ferocious fighting spirit led by Patrick Vieira that cowed opponents into submission before the game had even started.
When we won the title that season, at the home of our bitter rivals Tottenham, I was a guest of Lord Sugar in the boardroom.
Understandably, it had emptied long before Arsenal’s players stopped celebrating on the pitch. There was just me and my dad, a lifelong Spurs fan, when the door swung open and in walked Wenger and his No 2, Pat Rice.
I embraced them like they were surgeons who’d just saved my life — arguably, preposterously, this achievement felt even sweeter.
Then I ordered the most expensive bottle of French red wine the boardroom stocked and the four of us sat together for an hour chatting about football.
I met Wenger many times in those glorious early years and football was pretty much all he talked about. But he did it with such passion and knowledge.
Wenger is an erudite, well-read, charismatic man who is obsessed with football. That hour in the Spurs boardroom with him remains one of the greatest experiences of my life.
I can genuinely say I’ve never loved any man more than I loved Arsene Wenger that day. By yesterday, that love had dissolved into a feeling of such despair that I could barely look at the man. And yet now, as I remember the incredible highs of that first epic decade, those old feelings stir.
Like any elongated divorce, it’s been a painful process. Nobody, least of all me, has enjoyed seeing him reduced to a pale shadow of the manager he used to be.
Contrary to popular belief, I have never hated the man; I’ve only hated his refusal to step down when it was obvious he should do, especially when brilliant potential replacements such as Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola were being snapped up by rivals.
But finally he’s done so and that allows me to pay t tribute. For eight years, he rivalled Sir Alex as the best in the world and based on t that period alone, he was t the best in Arsenal history.
He won 10 trophies in 22 years y and more than 1,200 games. g But his legacy will be the way he transformed how English football was p played and how his teams co conducted themselves.
Out went the beer, in came th the scientific diets and fit fitness regimes. M More importantly, Wenger dr drove Arsenal to play exhilarating, ra one-touch, high-speed foo football of such exquisite skill an and style that it made us the en envy of the world.
‘M ‘My never- ending struggle in this business is to release what is beautiful in man,’ he told
L’Equipe in 2016. That struggle grew harder as Wenger’s powers lessened, but this is not the day to dwell on that. This is the day to look back with gratitude for the great times.
I hope we now go and win the Europa League for him. That would be the best send-off.
I have no doubt Arsenal fans, for so long bitterly fractured by contrary views of Wenger, will rally to salute him.
The Emirates will be packed for the final few home games. That is exactly what he deserves.
It’s time for Wenger’s most ferocious critics, including me, to get off his back and say what we have wanted to say throughout these years campaigning for his exit: ‘Goodbye, Arsene, and thank you.’ Piers Morgan writes regular exclusive columns for Mail Online.