OLD TRAFFORD VISIT WILL REMIND ARSENAL WHAT IS AT STAKE WHEN REPLACING MANAGER WENGER
Arsenal have only three away games left in the Premier League this season, but happily there is still time for Arsene Wenger to return to Manchester United, scene of many of the highs and lows in his extraordinary career.
One suspects the image that will surface most often this weekend is the iconic one of Wenger banished to the stand in 2009, arms outstretched at the pettiness of it all after being told by match officials that kicking a water bottle in frustration was far too grievous an offence to be allowed to remain on the sidelines.
There are other, happier memories, though. A win at Old Trafford put Wenger on the way to his first domestic double, a single Marc Overmars goal in March 1998 cutting Manchester United’s lead at the top of the league to six points — some Manchester bookmakers had already paid out on bets on Alex Ferguson’s team retaining the title — as Arsenal entered a 10-game winning sequence that would see them crowned champions by a single point.
Battle of Old Trafford
Slender as that margin appeared at the time, Arsenal’s tremendous run-in gave an early indication of the consistency of which they would prove capable under Wenger, as well as usefully preventing United winning six titles in a row to draw unflattering comparisons with the Scottish league.
Later there would be the Battle of Old Trafford and then the Battle of the Buffet as Arsenal grew into their role as United’s chief challengers in the early Noughties, even if ■ another few years brought the infamous 8-2 defeat that confirmed that by 2011 they had rather lost their way.
More than anything, though, more than the prospect even of a last touchline grimace with Jose Mourinho or a cheery hello from Alexis Sanchez, Arsenal are visiting a stadium that stands as an enormous monument to what is at stake when the time comes to replace the sort of transformative manager who has given years of service to the task of successfully reinventing a club.
No one could dispute that Wenger is up there with the very best in that regard. While some might quibble about the lack of a European Cup, all the deserved testimonials have stressed the fact that this is a man who altered English football, not just the club of which he was in charge.
Unique problem
Only the very best managers make themselves unsackable, and in the years of gradual Arsenal decline, that became part of a unique problem.
Ferguson before him had assumed such a position of strength and control at his club that he was able to choose his own retirement date, yet crucially United kept winning. He averaged a title every other season or better right until the end. That is what big clubs want and need.
Wenger was unable to produce it for Arsenal after the dizzy heights of the first decade, and as he himself admitted, around the time that Mourinho was labelling him a specialist in failure: “You cannot pretend you are a big club.”
That, nevertheless, is what Arsenal seem to have been doing these last dozen or so years.
What has just though presented happened, as sympathetically ■ as possible, is presumably linked to Arsenal struggling to make the top four for a second successive season and empty seats becoming a feature at the Emirates.
Great achievement
Perhaps a clue can be found in all the tributes to Wenger from the last few days. English football was still a provincial, insular game when he arrived here, the sort of self-contained comfort zone where you might find a decent manager aiming to stick around for a decade or longer.
Ferguson had already done 10 years at United by the time Wenger turned up at Arsenal.
It will not be going back there any time soon, not at the top level at any rate. That is the pair’s great modernising achievement, if you like, and it is also the reason why United miscalculated the Ferguson succession so badly.
Arsenal still have all that potential disruption to come, but they could do worse than be guided by the wise words of their departing leader. “What I like about Arsenal,” Wenger once said. “Is that they respect traditional values while not being scared to move forward.”