I might as well start from the beginning for the benefit of some people who might be too young to remember some of this... Arsenal were a boring, traditional, long ball English team which had some moderate domestic success. We finished 5th the season before Wenger arrived and 12th the season before that. Newcastle were a much bigger club, so were Leeds, Blackburn, Nottingham Forest among others. Wenger himself was a complete unknown with many papers skeptical or even making fun of the appointment. In the season he arrived, we finished in 3rd with only goal difference separating us from the Champions League. In his first full season we won the league and FA Cup double. He brought in some young players: for example Anelka, Henry, Vieira, Petit, Ljungberg, Pires, Overmars, Wiltord while competing with Man Utd who were able to spend £10, £20 up to £30m on players because they were the biggest and most dominant English club financially.how does wenger retain his job season after season, dissapointing result after dissapointing result? idk whats crazier, the fact that this man has not been fired yet although arsenal has been incompetent for almost a decade, or the fact that arsenal fans actually want him back! its crazy. if another big european club such as barcelona, bayern, or chelsea were to endure such embarassing losses season after season the manager would be GONE. but wenger stays. can an arsenal fan explain this to me?
He changed the way our players train, eat, and play and was one of the first managers in England to do so. Now it's normal and it might not seem like a big deal but most players back then saw nothing wrong with having a Mars bar before the game, a smoke at half time and a beer after the match. English teams did not do well in Europe at the time (hence 2 CL spots, only 1 the previous season) and it would be lazy to say Wenger modernized English football because the English game was heading that way anyway, but it is fair to say the arrival of Wenger gave the whole football profession a big kick up the backside and helped it on its way to becoming relevant again in Europe.
Another double and a few FA Cups followed while Utd won many titles including the Treble before Wenger decided in 2002 that the only way to compete with Man Utd and become a top club in Europe was to build a bigger stadium and modern training facility. And he convinced the board to do it with only the money Arsenal could generate from football in order to not rack up debt and risk financial trouble. And he committed himself to leading Arsenal despite knowing better than anyone that it would mean trying to compete while having to sell your best players every year for the next 10 years. A simple way to look at it is that the stadium cost £500m and that's how much had to be taken out of the first team to pay for it. Arsenal won another league title, the "invincible" season, and another FA Cup.
And so it began; Wenger couldn't spend and started buying teenagers like Van Persie, Fabregas and Kolo Toure and promoted academy players like Ashley Cole. Pires, Vieira, Cole, Henry (who was very loyal to Wenger), Adebayor, Hleb, Flamini, Toure, Van Persie, Fabregas, Nasri, Clichy, Song, these are just off the top of my head: players bought for nothing and sold at the peak of their careers. The reason for Wenger's "disappointing result after disappointing result" is because the last 10 years or so he has had to replace top quality with young players and still try to compete. Which other manager can sell their best player every single summer and still set records like the first team to reach 60pts in February, reaching the CL final, reach the CL knockout stages 15 seasons in a row? He has done an unbelievable job. When he finally retires and leaves English football, history will remember him as one of the greatest to ever come to these shores. His legacy will be transforming a traditional English club with a small local fanbase into one of the best in the world. I'm just amazed he stayed at Arsenal. He could have went to Real Madrid. Or PSG. Or any of the Italian clubs when they were still top of Europe. He had so many offers down the years but he stayed with Arsenal and put the club on a totally new course.
All the critics who say he is not delivering enough titles to a world class club like Arsenal is probably the best compliment he could get.
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