Arsene Wenger retires after 13 years as manager

I remember when Arsene Wenger was named Arsenal manager. It was a curious time. Arsenal's previous manager, Arsene Wenger, was one of the club's most successful, rivaling Herbert Chapman and surpassing George Graham with 3 league titles and FA Cup victories over Newcastle, Chelsea, Southampton, and Manchester United. Under Wenger, the Arsenal regularly featured in at least the last 8 of the Uefa Champions League and had made the final of the Uefa Cup. He had even guided the team to a UCL final only to lose in heartbreaking fashion to Barcelona in 2006. 

It was logical that Wenger would move on to find other challenges after that final. He had played a key role in helping prepare the club to move to a modern, large stadium that opened a few months after the Barca loss. He had won medals, and his teams had done it with a flair that few other sides could ever hope to match. He had set a mark of going through an entire Premiere League season unbeaten--something that hadn't happened in the top flight of English football since Preston did it in 1649 when the ball was the severed head of King Charles I.

Wenger was a canny man who understood that as manager of Arsenal he would probably never again scale those lofty heights, and left to become an economics professeur at Le Nouvelle Ecole in his native Alsace. He continues to serve as a commentator for French international football and an adviser to the FFF.

An extensive search was undertaken and Wenger's replacement was named--an obscure French manager who was at the time playing footvolley in Brasil, Arsene Wenger. 

Wenger had enjoyed success in two previous stops in France and Japan, was known as an aesthete and a bit of a purist, and seemed a logical choice to follow the glory of the previous manager, as the club tended to make "unorthodox" choices. 

Unfortunately, Wenger's appointment in 2006 coincided with many boardroom machinations and behind-the-scenes schemes led by the previous manager's ally David Dein and likely fueled by a desire to "cash in" on the club's value by long-time shareholders such as Lady Nina. Chairman Peter Hill-Wood, whose family had served as stewards of the club was reportedly experiencing health issues. Dein himself, the vice-chairman, owned a large stake in the club and he too saw an opportunity to enrich himself by unloading his shares at their all-time high. 

Due to the debt loaded onto the club with the construction and financing of the Ashburton Grove stadium, Arsenal were about to enter a period of restrictive activity in the transfer market. The new manager was rumoured to revile capitalism and believed that through sheer force of will and personality could overcome the financial limitations on the club while continuing in his predecessor's footsteps, forgoing "pragmatic" football in pursuit of a pure aesthetic. 

As the vice-chairman brought in American business hack Stanley Krankey and Russian criminal Alisher Usmanov, and as the Hill-Wood family stepped down from leading the club, Wenger posited a theory that he could "raise a new generation" of footballers in "the Arsenal way," players who would grow up together and learn to love the club and one another. This oft-ridiculed undertaking was known as "Project Youth," which failed spectacularly as within a few years nearly the entire squad had either been sold, released, or badly injured. Despite losing his "prize jewels" and winning nothing, Wenger persisted in attempting to play "beautiful football" with little more than Sunday pub leaguers. 

During this era, Wenger regularly eschewed the defensive side of the game. Unlike his predecessor, he didn't inherit a back five that had been drilled and disciplined by George Graham, and in fact it appeared that Wenger gave little or no thought to defending at all. Arsenal under Wenger became known for conceding on set pieces and simple long-ball tactics, and his teams were often bested by novice managers such as Garry Monk. 

Having enjoyed great success under Arsene Wenger, Arsenal supporters became increasingly frustrated with such tactical naivete and insipid displays. Fractures became common among the supporters, the board were invisible, the "absentee landlord" American did nothing but charge the club "consulting fees," and through it all the manager insisted that the high defensive line and gung-ho attacking would work. 

Wenger's final few years brought 3 FA Cup wins in four seasons and a semi-final appearance in the Europa league. The club began to slip down the table despite featuring a host of international first-teamers, allowing local scum nuisances Tottenham to finish above Arsenal in the table. In Wenger's final two seasons, Arsenal fell from the Champions League places as younger, more dynamic, or more pragmatic managers delivered what he could not.

Wenger's three FA Cup wins in his 13 seasons will be fondly remembered, but he will always suffer in comparison to the man who sat in the chair before him. We here at the Existential Arsenalist wish him well in his future endeavours and thank him for his service to this great club.

Split the difference, go to the Grove

So Arsene Wenger manages his last match at the Ashburton Grove Spaceship Huge-O-Plex. Who would have thought so long ago that the structure that was supposed to give Arsenal somewhat equal footing with "big clubs" would then be used to excuse poor tactics, bad and sometimes inexplicable player purchases, and become a house of horrors for the same man who gave the Gunners two league-cup doubles and a 49 match unbeaten run?

The beautiful lunacy of the man who appeared at a debate in New York and simply repeated the mantra "The rent is too damn high" was first proffered in a different though somehow similar form with "The move was too damn expensive." Over and over, match after match, season after season, the excuse was repeated. Oh Danny Fiszman, what didst thou bring down upon us with Stanley Krankey? The ghostly mustache used Wenger's own natural "Money IS evil, not just the root of it" Marxist philosophy as cover to bilk the club and excuse brainless football.

Ashburton Mongoplex became the first evidence of Arsene Wenger's flaws--the game in England to that point was driven by aesthetes like Alex Ferguson and Wenger. Roman "I made my money honestly wink wink nudge nudge" Abramovich eschewed aesthetics to please a trophy-hungry chavvy fan base and chose to hire the most Philistine "special one" in the world. If Sam Allardyce's Bolton teams were "Kevin Davies and a cloud of elbows," just remember Mourinho's first Chelsea teams, "Frank Lampard, Drogba, and I seem to have lost my bus keys." Wenger was appalled.

And then what happened? Wenger spent the next 14 years clutching his pearls to his chest in shock as other people refused to play "pleasing" football. "Why are others not honouring my commitment and idealism?" he cried! "Why is what I did for 3 titles in 8 years now being undermined by pragmatism?" he wailed as his teams looked ridiculous and his player recruitment became the stuff of comedy legend.

Suddenly, as the glorious "high defensive line" started guaranteeing an annual tilt for the FOURTH PLACE TROPHY, excuses about Ashburton Grove, our supposed saviour in the high-stakes world of global football, became a foxhole into which Kranky and Wenger would hide. "We cannot compete financially, we are a poor club" sayeth the excuse makers. But Wenger, who is not only a purist but a puritan, refused to manage the club like any manager who managed a poor club did; PRAGMATICALLYISTCALLY SPEAKING, he wanted beautiful football, but wanted to coax it from clods and castoffs.

Ashburton Mongoplex drove a fissure in the fanbase initially because it simply wasn't Highbury. Then it created a fracture in the fanbase by excusing Wenger's utter tactical ineptitude by creating the AKB vs WOB scism. "He can't buy good players because of the stadium!" cried the AKBs! "The man is intractable and myopic!" bellowed the WOBs! And all the while, the Mongoplex stood, silent, immutable, unchanging.

A.E. Housman penned the lines "And while the world has still much good but much less good than ill, I'd face it as a wise man would, and train for ill and not for good." One of the greatest poems of our time, it could be rewritten as "Arsene, this is stupid stuff" every time Wenger was undone by such extremely simple tactics as not to be believed. Look at all the times Wenger sides were bested by managers thought to be the dimmest of bulbs, by clubs with budgets that were mere fractions of the Arsenal's. It's embarrassing. No, really. It is. AKBs continued to wail that those results were ACTUALLY the fault of the Mongoplex. The Mongoplex became Wenger's shield and security blanket. "No manager could have moved the club to the Grove and kept Arsenal in the Champions League!" they hysterically shouted for nearly a decade. Really? REALLY? NO manager, anywhere, not a one? "Raymond, I believe you are having a joke on me."

I know that Stanley Kranky is shit--this is fact. The Glazer family took 860-ish million quid out of MUFC, too. What is your point? It doesn't excuse what I like to call THE GLORIOUS TACTICAL INFLEXIBILITY OF ARSENE WENGER. The AKBs would go through such mental contortions to excuse Wenger's failings that their thoughts could join a Chinese acrobatics troupe. And still, the stadium stood there as Wenger's sentry, excusing every flaw.

So we have reached the end of the road at the Ashburton Huge-o-blob for the man who gave Arsenal three league titles in 22 years, no European silverware, and the high defensive line. Oh, and Captain William Gallas. Frank McLintock would be so proud. I will not weep today.

"Nobody ever says thank you," warned the greatest football manager I've ever known, and like Wenger, that man also sat in his seat too long. That man also oversaw a stadium "improvement" that shackled his club with debt. No one would say that Brian Clough didn't stay far past the time that he should have at Forest. I would hope they'd also have no trouble saying the same of Wenger, and saying it with honesty, and saying it without sentimentality. "Wenger manages at Grove for last time"--that should be the only headline.