From Tim : big fall or new leaf
Hi Myles,
Last month I attended a series that had nothing to do with football and everything to do with leaders. It was an illuminating experience to put it mildly. It was about leadership, greatness & vision.
And it asked a vital question, why do great men fall?
And in an odd twist of fate as I relaxed one sunny afternoon watching tippy tap footy being played at The Grove it suddenly let me to an insight. And I wondered, what’s the key difference between Le. Prof and Sir Red Nose, really? Apart from the obvious class clash and different views/outlook to life, there remains the similarities in their intense desire to win, their love for football, Fergie will take time off from football, Wenger will watch football videos even in his sleep. They just go about it in different ways.
Nobody disagrees with the fact that Arsene Wenger has been one of the most brilliant, innovative and far thinking coaches in the world. He revolutionized English football and to some extent football as we know it. He changed how it was and is played, introduced players we had never seen before, powerful, fast, athletic players. A fast incisive passing game and a team that captured the worlds attention. But like most great men, the very thing that makes you great usually becomes your downfall.
And I wondered to myself, what has made Wenger veer into despotism? He has great skills in many facets of his life and a great deal of people admire him and his achievements immensely. But one thing you need as a leader of men is a true friend. Someone who will slap you straight and let you know when you are being silly. Someone who doesn’t buy the PR machine drivel that you spout in public. Someone who’ll tell you, “this my friend is not a big spoon”. Someone who’ll call it as it is and tell you the cold hard facts. Brutally. You know, this person knows you well and you know they have your best interests at heart. In that aspect, Wenger lost a lot when Dein left. Someone whose opinion he probably valued and the only man who could truly influence his decisions, and wasn’t afraid to challenge him.
Take a look at Alex Ferguson. A ruddy hard-boiled man. Someone who has seen a lot in his life as a football manager, but you always get the feeling he has the humility to know he doesn’t know everything. That he’ll bring in or talk to certain people just to get their take on a few issues here and there. That in itself has the ability to keep you grounded and focused on what is truly important. And its also one of the reasons why he has been so successful for so long.
Every Arsenal fan knows at some point 4-5 years ago Wenger decided to dismantle the invincibles. Knowing him, he probably had a vision, or do I call it an experiment? He probably calculated how long it would take to achieve it, what players he had to buy to get there and how the whole set up would run. What no one is sure of is why he did this – why he saw the need to get rid of all the tall, powerfully built warriors he had and decided to go for smaller more technically gifted players he has now.
Wenger is faltering and deep down he can feel the ground shifting beneath his feet.
By now he has an inkling that his ideals may be on sandy foundations. Is it contrary to his nature to seek people of a different belief or mindset? Will he be able to recover sufficiently to change and adapt? Life’s about that. Change or die. When does the desire to see through an idea, a project, morph into an obsession, who draws that line for you when you are alone at the top? How do you know your ideas are not workable especially if this same system has yielded such dramatic results before? What methods does he use to step back and review objectively the way forward?
The sad nature of human beings is that we see only those things that support our value system. So whether he analyzes the tapes and the data for eternity, there are things he might never see by himself.
Wenger is an intellectual, a scientist with precise methods and scientists usually have a torrid time changing things they can’t replicate or analyze. They have trouble realizing when a new paradigm has hit town. So he might just be stuck on the facts and stats he sees. For someone so far seeing and creative, he has a famed sense of myopia. Ferguson in that aspect is his polar opposite, a person who prefers to speak to people on their own level. Someone who doesn’t mind looking foolish occasionally. Have you ever seen him celebrate a goal, he’s like a small child. Wenger even at his most enthusiastic still maintains strict control over himself. Both have short tempers, but Wenger will rarely shout at his players, as for Fergie, well hair dryer is a term we’ve heard of once in a while in his many years at the helm.
If a team thus reflects the managers personality, then Arsene has lost his old one where he was a winner, athlete & performer all in one and become a mild, technically proficient wuss bag. I think in a way Arsenal are lucky the opponents have become weaker so the teams frailties aren’t really as glaring as they could be. Any truly great player within the team set up at the moment with a mind of his own, realizes that something is not quite ticking the way it should.
What was I trying to say at the beginning of all this, because I think I got lost somewhere is, Wenger needs another Dein or at least an honest person who’s not a sycophant.
Someone who will help him take the club to the next level, someone with new ideas, a different perspective. A partner who’s unlike him in so many ways, but more importantly someone who does not owe him anything. A different voice and brain, someone to keep him fresh, if he doesn’t, then the road ahead might be very grim indeed. But change needs a realization on the part of the addicted, whether he sees that or not really depends entirely on him. The people around him now won’t challenge him on much really, he’s become immune to criticisms, and that’s where the slippery slope to the end becomes steep. For me it would be a sad ending to a great beginning if Arsenal’ greatest ever manager was to fall from grace.
And so the big question is:Will the great man turn over a new leaf, or fall like so many others before him?