Arsene Wenger is a charismatic sports scientist.
That is the first line of The Professor. And it was the last line I wrote on May 12, my deadline day.
The Preface wrote itself. What’s in those three pages could have been at the end of the book, but I put them at the beginning.
But I had to think of a first line and something obvious popped out : Arsene Wenger is a charismatic sports scientist who loves attacking football.
As we all know, he changed Arsenal and he won leagues and cups and doubles.
And 70% of The Professor is about how Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, Robert Pires and Freddie Ljungberg outplayed and outpowered most of the opposition most of the time. How those great Arsenal teams won seven trophies between 1998 and 2005.
Never afraid of the obvious, I called 2006-2007…. The First Season at the Emirates Stadium.
This from page 379 :
Arsenal started brightly in the replay at Bolton, scored early, Meite equalised in stoppage time, and they won 3-1 in extra time. In the Fifth Round they could not open up a nine-man Blackburn defence which came to the Emirates for a 0-0. The line-up, with nine changes from Bolton, did not gel. The way to win that tie was to start Rosicky and Adebayor, score two goals, and then bring on some subs. Instead, Wenger went into it thinking about the next game against PSV Eindhoven because winning his first European Cup meant more to him than winning his fifth FA Cup.
In Holland the game began as a sparring session between two possession teams. Then, in 61 minutes, Ecuadorian Edison Mendez started a move of six passes and finished it with a scorching shot from 25 yards. A 1-0 defeat was not an irretrievable disaster but it looked as if Wenger was rotating his team out of its fluency. Partnerships were broken up all the time as players came in and out, and the side lost movement, accuracy, tidyness. Clearly, the manager had to rotate because of injuries, fatigue, and a thin young squad, but his style was based on speed and rhythm. If you rest players because they’re not lively enough, then bring them back, they may be physically fresher but they’ve lost fluency. Even the goalkeeper suffered. Lehmann played, got dropped, played, got dropped again, and became less commanding.
On page 383, I start last season four weeks in:
At White Hart Lane on September 15, Tom Huddlestone stupidly confronted Manuel Almunia when the Arsenal keeper had the ball in his hands. It was a silly tiff and referee Mark Clattenburg spoke to both players without booking them. A few moments later, near the halfway line, Bacary Sagna kicked Huddlestone to send him a clear message : Don’t fuck with my keeper ! Clattenburg’s yellow card gave Arsenal’s new right back an equally clear message : Do that again, son, and you’re off ! Clattenburg, six yards away, had seen exactly what Sagna had done and why.
That tiny incident, which passed unnoticed in a game which Arsenal won 3-1, signalled a sea-change in Arsenal’s attitude. It was significant moment because it would never have happened the previous season. Now that timid Thierry had been sold to Barcelona for £16.1 million, the fiercely competitive William Gallas was captain, and Arsenal’s football was more abrasive as they swept through August with four wins and a draw and romped on through September with six consecutive wins. October 23 brought their twelfth straight victory : Arsenal 7 Slavia Prague O.
On Page 389, I move the book towards its conclusion :
As we have seen, Arsene Wenger’s golden years were fantastic. He effected the management of change in an inspired manner from 1996 onwards. He looked at what he had, sold Merson, bought Overmars and Petit, took a chance on Anelka, and won the double with the most exciting Arsenal team we had ever seen. He had eight phenomenal years with a very good group of players, who found a great away of playing in 1998 and 2002 and 2004 .
Nobody else could have sold Anelka for £23 million, which built a training ground and bought Thierry Henry, and nobody else could got 226 goals out of a superfast left winger by building teams round him, and nobody else would have said “We can go through a whole season unbeaten” and then do exactly that a year later. But that is all ancient history. Arsenal became a property company with seriously large debts, so they had a young, cheap team, and the economist in Wenger relished the challenge of being the underdog but still beating the big boys. But in nine games against the big three, Arsenal only won once, when Cech flapped and Gallas headed home.
If you enjoy this kind of stuff, The Professor has 400 pages of it. A good cheap read at £5.99.