When Arsene Wenger finally decides to relinquish the throne at Arsenal, he will be remembered as the clubs most successful manager of all time, winning more silverware than any other manager. It will be of debate as to whether or not he was the most influential, that legacy cannot be fully determined until there have been successors.
Where posterity records Wenger amongst all managers is a matter for huge debate. There are differing measures against which ‘greatness’ in the managerial stakes is applied. It seems that to be considered truly great, emerging victorious from European competition is a yardstick by which achievement is gauged. In this aspect, Wenger is deficient despite having two bites at the cake, the first of which in 2000 still escapes rational explanation. Of all the nights for the team to put in a poor performance, it had to be that one! In particular, the failure to win the Champions League dogs him at the moment. Paris remains the ‘one that got away’ but equally, quarter final defeats against Chelsea, when the winners should have gone on to win the trophy such was the paucity of opposition, and Valencia are arguably of equal standing in this respect. Busby, Clough, Paisley and Ferguson have this bauble in their trophy rooms. Others such as Nicholson, Revie and Shankly won other European trophies – some on more than one occasion.
Domestically, Wenger stands as a peer to any of them. He may not have won the League Cup but to have done the double twice is an achievement matched only by Ferguson. There are of course, rewards that stand him apart from others. An undefeated League season; another where there were no defeats away from home; the longest run undefeated in English history amongst them.
What really decides whether a manager is great or not is the situation that they inherited, what that became and what they left behind? None have been so successful that there have not been fallow years for their clubs at some point in time. Busby rebuilt United after Munich to a peak of the European Cup in 1968; there followed a few trinkets here and there until their first Premier League title in 1990s. Shankly took Liverpool from the depths of the Second Division and laid the foundation for fifteen years of dominating English football. Managers such as Clough, Revie, Nicholson had fleeting spells of glory only to see this washed away either at their own failings or the hands of others who succeeded them.
There is a common element though with them all; they rebuilt clubs from varying standpoints. Some – Shankly, Clough and Revie – from lower divisions to the summit; others from lower status in the top flight than expectations surrounding their clubs demanded. All have one thing in common; they built teams, disbanded them and the rebuilt. Clough never quite mastered that art but built successful teams at Derby and Forest in testing circumstances. Paisley had perhaps the highest starting point of all but maintained that win trophy after trophy to the extent that his joke that Liverpool had a ‘bad year’ when finishing second had more than an element of truth in it.
Wenger is on his third Arsenal team and arguably his most important. The other two have been built on transfer dealings. This one is laying the foundations for the future, putting his reputation to the fore. Whilst the stadium was being constructed, there were limited transfer funds which required an unparalleled knowledge of the world game. The scouting network that has grown under him has meant that more financially powerful clubs are playing catch-up, something unrivalled in the past. The key to this is having a youth set-up that delivers to the first team, negating various rules and regulations about ‘home – grown’ players which may or may not become more stringent as the years pass. Every manager will sign players from other clubs, it is impossible to become self-sufficient due to the limitations of squad sizes.
Ferguson had his ‘Golden Generation’ which came to fruition in 1999; he has never replicated that. Wenger may yet reap the benefits of his Academy but he benefits from ‘improved’ communications where there is more information about the progress of youths and reserves than in the past. Looking back, Kevin Campbell’s reputation was built upon those who saw the reserve games and reported back by word of mouth or via matchday programmes that reported him scoring goal after goal at the younger levels. Now, the advent of websites such as Youtube and streaming of games, club TV channels means such progress can be more closely scrutinised.
The legacy Arsene will leave is in the ‘science’ applied to the players in terms of diet, care and training. Others have brought on board his ideas in England and applied their own variants to this. He was by no means the first to do so in Europe but was a pioneer on these shores. The football side of the club will be assured for successors also but whether they chose to squander this or build upon it remains to be seen. Each man believes in their own route to success and more than likely, elements of the operation will be changed to suit those.
His reign at the club has made it more popular than ever and with that comes a rising expectation. He has made mistakes and is not perfect, nor does he claim to be. However, it should not be forgotten how listless the club was prior to his arrival, drifting aimlessly into the football wilderness following on from the end of George Graham’s reign. In re-igniting Arsenal for a sustained return to pre-war Glories, he has assured himself a place in the top ten of the greatest managers of English clubs. There is time yet to improve that rating.
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‘til Tomorrow.
