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Arsène Wenger- the meticulous planner: ‘His failures burn him’ |
Can Arsenal FC's Arsène Wenger grab the glory without a big pot of gold?
That’s the challenge facing the ‘Professor’ while the Gunners pay for the Emirates , writes Richard Osley
AS the teenager slalomed and skipped past defenders on a jet-heeled run which seemed to go on forever, it looked like a masterplan was suddenly clicking into place.
He dipped his shoulder as a deception and, in a blur of pace, he galloped beyond his weary and heavy-footed pursuers.
When he reached the penalty area, Theo Walcott clipped the football across the pitch where a team-mate was free and waiting to score a crucial goal.
As they hugged and screamed, Arsenal had more or less proven a pride of armchair critics wrong and had beaten Liverpool in the Champions League.
The manager Arsène Wenger had thrown on Walcott as a substitute, unleashing his sprinter’s speed on the fatigued Liverpool defenders in the closing moments of a draining two-leg tie.
It might have been remembered as a master-stroke if Liverpool had not, as Wenger’s misfortune would have it, won a penalty seconds later, scored, turned the tables and won the game.
In a matter of moments, the euphoria was over for another season.
Myles Palmer’s revised portrait of Wenger – almost a game by game recollection of his past 11 years in charge – is pock-marked with stories of how his meticulous plans can go awry.
Sometimes an unexpected red card has disrupted everything, or a missed penalty or an unfortunate injury.
Take Eduardo, a new striker recruited by Wenger last season, who spliced his ankle so badly that TV coverage would not screen the tackle.
It happened in a match which Arsenal drew but if they had won they would have been sailing eight points clear at the top of the league.
You could almost feel sorry for the man Palmer calls the Professor, if it was not for the fact he is well paid, doing a job others would love and was better at accepting defeat – however painful it is.
“He is the most ungracious loser in the league,” says Palmer, for all his admiration for his subject. “His failures burn him.”
Wenger’s devotion and preparation deserves an even better return for the bumper crop of prizes he has brought to Islington.
Whatever disappointments recent years have brought, he has the freedom of Islington for winning the Premiership three times and the FA Cup four times. If Arsenal fans are feeling gloom, this profile will remind you of the heroic times when Arsenal won the Premiership at Manchester United and Tottenham and went through an entire season without being defeated once.
You can’t imagine anybody else being behind the manager’s desk. This profile, which also includes a prelude of his time in France and Japan, confirms his obsessive attention to detail and the long hours watching football footage into the night.
Right now, however, he has his most intriguing project on his hands so far: an experiment of trying to compete with the best teams without matching them in the inflated multi-million pound transfer market. If it wasn’t Wenger in charge, you’d say it was a foolhardy and near impossible test.
The lack of spending is partly because Arsenal are still shelling out on bills for the Emirates Stadium, the steel and stone coliseum that appeared on the north London skyline two years ago.
“At Highbury [the old Arsenal ground] the team was better than the stadium,” Palmer tells us. “At the Emirates, the stadium is better than team.”
The point is debatable – Arsenal played the most attractive football in England last season – but you get the impression that Wenger enjoys trying to do things differently, cultivating unknown players into household names.
But Palmer is right with his sentiment: “If a mule and Arsène Wenger had a tug-of-war, the mule would lose.”
He’ll have another shot at it all when the new season kicks of on Saturday. On the surface, his team isn’t experienced or strong enough but as long as Wenger is picking the team, you never really know.
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