He has immersed himself in our football culture ...and showed us something better
To win every game playing beautifully was his remit
The tributes arrived in torrents. Most heartfelt, others tear-streaked, some, from his harshest critics, maybe tinged with regret.
Yet for a measure of Arsene Wenger’s achievement, for how he will be judged in posterity, one need only look at this season, and the way its champions are discussed.
Watching as Manchester City strove for perfection, for technical excellence, for an aesthetic quality so rare, even among the best, there was only one worthy comparison: Arsenal. Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal.
That was the team City were trying to emulate, the team that set the benchmark. Not just in one unbeatable season, but every time Wenger sent them out to play.
he did not always succeed, we know that. Wenger’s flag on the summit of football’s pinnacle is tattered and torn by time.
Yet when it first flew, we had seen nothing like his achievement, or at least his ambition. To win, every game, playing beautifully: that was his remit. It was an impossible dream, quite the hardest path for any coach, but Wenger would not compromise.
When we see Pep Guardiola’s City now, we do not think of Manchester United or Chelsea — clubs who have enjoyed considerably more success in recent years — we think of Arsenal. We think of their bravery, of players who wanted the ball, accepted the ball in the tightest of spaces, who delivphilosophy ered one extra pass in front of goal, to ensure the perfect execution.
A Premier League coach explained to his players that, in 36 of 38 games, if the opposition got to the by-line, he wanted his defenders set up a certain way for the inevitable cross. The exception, he said, was Arsenal. Arsenal will play out to come in from a different angle. They tried to pass the ball into the net, too; like City. They were unique in that era, the pioneers.
It is easy to forget the club Wenger discovered when he alighted in the narrow streets around highbury in 1996, charmed not just by the history, but the quaintness of terraced houses in such proximity.
Indeed, few under the age of 30 will remember an Arsenal who were synonymous with cautious football and whose fans rejoiced in the song ‘one-nil to the Arsenal’ because it was so often the final scoreline, not the prelude to further forward impetus.
Wenger changed the culture of the club, not essentially in terms of success — because George Graham enjoyed some great years, too — but in what it represented.
he turned a team famous for its defence into one that made observers swoon over its attack. In doing so, he helped reroute the english game.
Wenger’s influence was not merely local. he was the antithesis of the english long-ball approach, of a football culture that confused bingeing with bonding. his made a certain negative approach, if not obsolete, then certainly unfashionable — and unconscionable at elite level.
Long before Jose Mourinho coined the phrase ‘parking the bus’, Wenger had made the practice reprehensible. his aim was always higher. Games in which he is perceived to have shut up shop can be counted on one hand. Later, this was perceived as a failing.
More
reasonably, the failing was an inability to identify players who could close a game down when necessary. The best Wenger teams always had defensive intelligence, and brawn to match their brains.
That is what made the recent decline so hard to comprehend. Undoubtedly, Wenger knew how to construct a winning team. he knew the worth of experienced, organised defenders; he knew the power of midfield pistons such as Patrick Vieira and emmanuel Petit; he knew that the best forwards, such as Thierry henry, robert Pires and Dennis Bergkamp, were also physically combative and would win the right to inflict their superior skills.
It is not true that Wenger inherited his best defenders. The Invincible back six from the unbeaten 2003-04 season was Lauren, Sol Campbell, Kolo Toure, Ashley Cole, Jens Lehmann and Gilberto Silva — all players Wenger either purchased or nurtured. That he simply took over Graham’s back four and made hay is a myth; only Martin Keown remained from the Graham era in the Invincible defence, and he started three league matches that season.
Maybe, as with many coaches whose philosophy is so strong and, at first, so successful, Wenger just became entrenched in his beliefs.
The more his judgments were criticised or doubted, the more convinced he became that he was right, and would be vindicated.
Placed on the defensive, he was increasingly protective of his position. Yet events were not kind to him. Moving to a new stadium restricted his budget just at a time when new and financially powerful rivals were emerging.
Fishing in a shallower pool, he went from being the manager who always proved the cynics wrong, to one who too often proved them right. Where once players like Petit and Vieira confounded expectations, increasingly, later signings did not.
Those who thrived too often then saw Arsenal as an upmarket stepping stone. They became a feeder club for those with more realistic title ambitions, their biggest names — robin van Persie, Alexis Sanchez, Samir Nasri, Cesc Fabregas — merely picked off.
By the time Arsenal could afford to catch up, the distance was too great. An odd headline signing, such as Mesut ozil, was never going to match the immense improvements at clubs such as Manchester City and Chelsea — and by then Wenger preferred to pontificate about the newly wealthy rather than challenge them. The last two seasons have seen Arsenal shrink from relevance as title contenders.
Indeed, the greatest sadness in this endgame is that Arsenal, not just the club but many of its fans, appear to have given up on the marriage before Wenger.
he at least took control with his announcement, going out on his terms, at his time of choosing. Yet that is not the whole story.
It is believed Wenger feared the prospect of being dismissed at the end of the season, not least as a new raft of football- related executives had been installed around him. Also, in recent weeks, he has had to make increasingly implausible excuses for rows of empty seats at home matches.
Without doubt, the club were bothered by this, plus a significant drop in season ticket renewals.
ULTIMATELY,
the simplest, most straightforward, protest had considerably more impact than those showy fly- pasts, banners and broadcasts. That his critics succeeded by hitting Arsenal in the pocket should not be lost on Wenger, the economics graduate.
Be careful what you wish for will be another popular phrase this morning, but it is hardly justified in these circumstances.
Arsenal are not looking for a manager who can win the Double or go the year unbeaten, but one who can improve on sixth, where they currently reside, two points above Burnley; who can get them back into the Champions League, a status that is now conditional on them winning the europa League, a tricky proposition with Atletico Madrid arriving this week.
Wenger has won the FA Cup three out of the last four seasons, and that should not be forgotten, but he set the bar higher in his early days. Arsenal are looking to upgrade Wenger 2.0 not the cleaner Wenger 1.0.
If he is not leaving as Brian Clough did, relegated at Nottingham Forest, this is not Sir Alex Ferguson’s triumphant title-winning farewell either — unless he delivers the europa League. Barring such a perfect finale, Wenger’s successor is more likely to be intimidated by his legacy than his immediate past.
For this is what deserves to be remembered now. That a man arrived and changed english football. Not just by being the first foreign manager to win our league — not by being a hired hand, hit and run and off to the next placement — but by immersing himself in this football culture, by showing us something better, by challenging conventions and expectations, by looking up, not down.
Manchester City may beat all manner of records in the coming weeks, but on January 14 when they lost at Anfield, it ensured Wenger’s Arsenal would remain the only Invincibles of the postVictorian era. The standard against which all others must be judged, still. even City; even Guardiola.