The visionary Wenger

For the best part of a decade the almost impossible task of replacing Sir Alex Ferguson has been the elephant in the boardroom at Manchester United, though over the next few years the directors at Arsenal will be faced with an even bigger, omnipresent, beast. In some respects finding a successor for Arsene Wenger will be even more difficult.



Although admittedly in the doldrums, United were still regarded as one of the world’s leading clubs when Ferguson took over 22 years ago, with a thriving heritage, fan-base and stadium just waiting for the team to catch up, whereas Wenger is almost single-handedly responsible for Arsenal’s current status. 

The club had enjoyed considerable success in the past of course, dominating domestic football in the 1930s, the early 1970s and for a brief period under George Graham at the start of the 1990s, though have never before been so universally admired as the guardians of the beautiful game, nor enjoyed such world-class facilities underpinned by a brilliant business plan.

The visionary Wenger has remodeled the club from top to bottom, both on and off the pitch, and as a result Arsenal have so much more to lose.

Like his great rival at Old Trafford, Wenger has earned the right to choose his own departure date – with no-one seriously suggesting his position is under threat despite a barren spell of three years without a trophy that could easily stretch to four and beyond – but this element of self-selection will not necessarily make the process more straightforward. 



It is in the nature of all managers, particularly the most successful, to continually set themselves one more challenge, just one additional trophy for the collection and a few further players to develop. For a while it looked as if Ferguson had fallen into the trap of going on too long and Wenger could easily do the same, leaving his successor to take over from a position of weakness, unlike current the situation at United, who continue to go from strength to strength.

As they search for potential candidates Arsenal also have far fewer Wenger-schooled acolytes to call upon than United, who have provided one-fifth of the Premier League’s managers. Bryan Robson may have fallen off the radar but at various different times Roy Keane, Mark Hughes, Paul Ince and Steve Bruce have all appeared as plausible successors to Ferguson, which should come as no great surprise as they all played in what remains the favourite of all his teams, the 1994 Double Winners. By contrast, Tony Adams is the only former Arsenal player managing in the Premier League, and in his brief spell at Portsmouth he has yet to win a single point.



Wenger’s failure to inspire many of his players to successful managerial careers is something of a curiosity which could be explained by his love of free-spirited individuals, as the list of protégés is surprisingly small. David Platt’s time in charge of Nottingham Forest and the England Under-21s was an unmitigated disaster and Dennis Bergkamp has just begun working with the youth teams at Ajax, leaving Dynamo Kiev’s assistant manager Oleg Luzhny as the former Wenger player with the greatest managerial experience. And the former Ukrainian international is hardly a plausible candidate to replace him.



Wenger toyed with the idea of adding Paul Le Guen, the former Lyons coach, to his staff before the Frenchman did his best to ruin his reputation by moving to Glasgow Rangers, though his failure to do so means that the next manager will come from outside the club. Given Arsenal’s reputation for attacking football the next generation of Dutch coaches, such as Frank Rijkaard and Marco Van Basten, could come into consideration, while an outside bet would be the Anglo-phile Slaven Bilic if he continues his good work with Croatia. 



Arsenal’s recruitment record will not inspire much confidence amongst their fans however, as they are still operating without a director of football 18 months after the departure of David Dein and a six-month long search for a chief executive to replace Keith Edelman has led to nothing. 

In addition to the commitment of lifelong-servant Ken Friar, the club secretary, Arsenal’s ability to remain competitive in such circumstances owes a great deal to Wenger’s work-rate all-round influence, providing further examples of why he will be impossible to replace. 



For all their current problems Arsenal fans should cherish Wenger while they can. And for the rest of us, hopefully we'll witness the following scenes tomorrow at The Emirates when Arsenal welcome Manchester United (kick off 13.45, Canal+ Sport 1).