Arsènal (11 page)

One of the few foreign exceptions among Wenger's scouting network is Gilles Grimandi, whose primary remit is naturally France and the francophone overseas territories. He succinctly states, “We are able to attract the most promising prospects because we have a calling card stamped ‘Arsène Wenger'.” And Grimandi adds, “[Another] asset to attract youngsters is the fact that with us they know they will get the chance to play . . . it is one of our principal arguments.” It was certainly one that Arsène Wenger used to Monsieur and Madame Clichy when he went to see them at their home in the south of France a few days before the FA Cup Final in 2003 to persuade them to entrust him with the development of their precocious teenage son. Gaël Clichy's club, Cannes, had been relegated to the third division and had been forced to abandon its professional status and he was now a free, though much in demand, agent. With strong competition from a number of French clubs, Damien Comolli, then a vital member of Arsène's entourage, pushed Wenger into action. As Clichy recalls, “He [Wenger] told me that Giovanni van Bronckhorst would be loaned to Barcelona and I would be the understudy for Ashley Cole. And that's exactly what happened . . . in France perhaps there are not enough chances for young players . . . there is nowhere better than England.”

There is a harmonious common purpose throughout the disparate parts of the scouting networks. As Wenger explains, “The scouts and myself have regular discussions on how we assess players. We also arrange an annual get together so that the scouts can see how the first team train. We then make sure that they go and see any prospect we are interested in at training so there can be a direct comparison. Great importance is attached to what can be learned by observing a potential prospect's preparation.” As he joked regarding José Antonio Reyes, “We even watched him in training. How did I do that? With a hat and a moustache.” Perhaps the banal nickname of ‘Clousseau' given to him on arrival by his English players was accurate after all.

This thoroughness can extend to trailing the quarry for years. Wenger adds about Reyes that he was “scouted for two years, every minute of every game.” Unlike many clubs which according to Gilles Grimandi “have a tendency to pursue many leads in case they miss someone good . . . we limit our horizon and closely follow only a few. We will start at 16 or 17 and then if necessary, follow them until they are 20 . . . and perhaps one day they will sign [for us]”. This attention to detail is confirmed by Tony Banfield's admission that, “Only three youngsters have been signed by the club as a result of my own scouting over 11 years, but the potential returns when you get it right justify the work I do.” As an example of his own meticulous attention to detail, Grimandi reveals that “I saw Bacary Sagna on more than 30 occasions. I checked him once, then ten times, then 20 times before finally deciding he was the one we needed.” In fact, Grimandi was so painstaking that by the time Sagna arrived from Auxerre in the summer of 2007, he was an atypical signing, at the end of the accepted age scale. “It is difficult to envisage taking a player of 23”, says Grimandi. “It's too late. It's not worth the trouble of extending our quotas [of older players]”. Wenger though is pleased that he bent the rules in this case. At Christmas 2007, he told an acquaint ance that “he is one of those who has pleased me most”, after Sagna became the first-choice right back.

The conclusion that can be drawn from the Arsenal academy's ten years of existence is that its function is to provide back-up players for the first-team squad, with the probability that they will eventually be sold on having failed to hold down a starting eleven spot. Liam Brady – an Arsenal man through and through – must, at times, ask himself whether much of his time has been well spent, giving the lie to David Dein's hyperbolic claim that he [Brady] “has the most important job at the club”. Perhaps Wenger is too familiar with Brady's role, and feels he knows better from bitter experience. “In the beginning, I started by coaching five-to seven-year-olds at a football school, then seven-to ten-year-olds at the club [Strasbourg],” he recalls. “I then took the academy and it's there that one understands that there are young players who've not been given their chance. At the same time this is a point of decision for me. I have to see who will become a professional and who won't.”

And if a player makes the grade for Wenger, “then comes the crucial period of integration into the first team. You must make a place available for a young player and it is often the most delicate of tasks, one which many clubs fail.” Sometimes, it is timing rather than ability that determines the careers of Wenger's trainees. “At some stage I have to make a decision and if you do that it is not always just considering the individual – you consider an overall package. Who is in front of him? With who is he competing? Will he get in front of this guy? Is he at a level when he cannot wait anymore – if you don't do it now he will completely sink and therefore sometimes there is a gamble in there. But at the end of the day the most important thing is that the guy has a good life.”

It is undoubtedly rewarding for trainees to go through their professional evolution at the academy but, so far, there seems to be little positive benefit for the future of the club itself, except on the player trading balance sheet. Even the justification that there is a lack of technique in English players seems to be countered of late by the moving on of prospects originally discovered overseas, such as Larsson and the Ghanaian-Dutch forward Quincy Owusu-Abeyie. Whether Arsenal are best served by such an approach is a moot point, but Arsène Wenger's policy of placing his trust in players of all nationalities who he can influence at first hand looks set to continue. “I always say to my players who are foreign, ‘Don't just believe that you have to play well, you have to do better than people from here. If you go to a foreign country you have to give something more. If you do just what the local people do, they don't need you. So there is pressure on you to give more.'”

CHAPTER FIVE

Arsène Wenger's most successful spell to date at Arsenal occurred between the 2001/02 and 2004/05 seasons, when the club landed five major trophies in four years. The pinnacle was the Premiership campaign of 2003/04 when the team accomplished the feat of going through the entire league programme without incurring a single defeat, a phenomenal feat that had only been achieved once before in England – by Preston North End in the 19th century, and they only played 22 matches compared to Arsenal's 38.

Within the ‘Invincibles', there were contributors from his 1997/98 team – Patrick Vieira, Dennis Bergkamp, Ray Parlour and (albeit in more of a supporting role) Martin Keown – but for the most part a new team had been constructed largely with the chequebook, although there was no profligacy on the manager's part. In Wenger's first nine seasons at the club, the haul of titles and FA Cups was accum ulated for a deficit of around £44 million (£136 million being the total spend). That he was able to attain such value for money was due to his knack of realising a high return on players whose reputations had been enhanced by his tutelage. Most notably, Nicolas Anelka (£23 million) and Marc Overmars (£25 million) brought in colossal sums from Real Madrid and Barcelona respectively, accounting for over half of the income received through transfer sales in that period. The profit from such deals enabled the club to establish itself as a major force in Europe without spending the huge amounts other teams did. If one definition of a great manager is someone who makes fewer mistakes in acquiring players, then coupled with his ability to develop youngsters, Wenger's shrewdness in the transfer market places him in this rarefied category. Moreover, his sense of timing of when to release a star has usually been spot on. Although he would not have chosen to sell Anelka, to secure Thierry Henry as a replacement for less than a third of the fee received from Real Madrid, was a masterstroke (and the remainder underwrote the construction of the sumptuous new training centre at London Colney, jokingly referred to as the ‘Nicolas Anelka training ground' by former goalkeeping coach Bob Wilson). On the other hand, there is no argument that Wenger got the best years out of Overmars – his subsequent seasons were littered with injuries, with an enforced retirement four years after leaving Highbury, as well as turning a profit of over £18 million on the sale.

Later, anticipating a drop in their contribution, Wenger began to break up the Invincibles, with Patrick Vieira departing for £13.7 million in 2005 and Thierry Henry bidding
adieu
two years on for the £16.1 million paid by Barcelona. Aside from making way for younger replacements, both have subsequently missed a notable amount of playing time due to the ravages of injury. In hindsight, Wenger did well to get what he did, even if at the time some fans felt he was being short-changed, such was the contribution Vieira and Henry had made. Yet even if the supporters were sad to see their heroes move on, Wenger is ruthless when the welfare of the group is at stake, invariably being proved correct, as both the cast-aside apprentice and experienced international would reluctantly admit (though some individuals who went onto better things, such as Jermaine Pennant, David Bentley or Lassana Diarra, might argue that Wenger acted too expediently).

And so it was from the transfer fees received, together with the revenue from the Champions League, that Wenger constructed his ‘second' team. The summer of 2000 saw some significant spending, as did the following close season. A characteristic of the majority of the new arrivals (includ ing Robert Pires, Lauren and Sylvain Wiltord) was their unfamiliarity with the English game. Indeed, against Crystal Palace on Valentine's Day 2005, for the first time ever in a Premiership match, a 16-man squad totally devoid of any British players was named.

However, it wasn't all bad news for English patriots. Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell were not selected against Palace due to illness and injury respectively, and in building a new back line to succeed his inherited defence, both England internationals were key components. Whilst Cole improbably came through the ranks, Campbell had been acquired on a free transfer (personally profiting from a remunerative signing-on fee as Tottenham had foolishly allowed his contract to expire). However, two other arrivals showed that for all his acumen in the transfer market, Wenger was prone to error. Goalkeeper Richard Wright arrived from Ipswich to challenge for David Seaman's position and was selected enough times to gain a Premiership winner's medal, yet, having played in every match of the FA Cup, was dropped for the final in favour of still first choice Seaman. No one would have predicted Wright's leaving before the older keeper, but after just one season he was offered to Everton for a loss of £2.5 million. Another notable flop was Francis Jeffers, a striker who cost £8 million but failed abysmally to justify the outlay, eventually moving on at a loss of over £5 million, having played a few games with a negligible return in the goals scored column. Wenger would wait almost five years before he invested substantially in another Englishman, teenager Theo Walcott.

However, the transfer failures are mere footnotes to a rich history of coups. Henry and Pires were joined in the hall of fame by Freddie Ljungberg, Lauren, Gilberto and Kolo Toure, forming a squad with the likes of Kanu, Sylvain Wiltord and Edu in reserve producing a depth in quality unmatched in Wenger's time at the club. There was no issue with a panoply of foreign stars as the trophies were being collected in ever-increasing number. As the old guard moved on, the newcomers gelled and a relatively seamless transition took place as this new group unveiled performances that had the likes of the Dutch maestro Johan Cruyff drooling over them: “I watch Arsenal all the time and I admire their style. If they win playing football the way only they know how then Europe would be proud to have such champions.”

The period was highlighted by the securing of two league records. Firstly, they put together a sequence of 23 away matches without suffering a defeat (in tandem with being unbeaten at home after December 2001) that effectively ensured the 2001/02 title. The run was ended in October 2002 by a late winner from a 16-year-old Everton substitute called Wayne Rooney. However, Wenger's men surpassed even this exploit by remaining unbeaten home and away for 49 games, beginning in May 2003 and continuing for 17 months until October 2004 when once again Arsenal's nemesis proved to be Rooney (now a Manchester United player). He scored the second goal, as well as earning a contentious penalty for the first in the 2–0 league defeat at Old Trafford. After both setbacks, the team took time to recover, dropping points that would ultimately cost them their chance of retaining the league titles secured in putting the runs together.

In 2002, the Everton defeat bequeathed a series of four losses in eight league outings. As Arsenal only lost six times over the course of the entire campaign, finishing five points behind champions Manchester United, it was a lethal slump. Similarly, two years on, 12 points were then dropped from 18 available after starting the season like a runaway train, continuing their invincibility of the previous campaign. The steady stream of missed opportunities allowed the free-spending Chelsea to overtake them and become the dominant team in England, with Arsenal again finishing runners-up.

In both seasons, as defending champions, it seemed a case of picking up where they had left off before the summer break. A 4–1 humbling of Leeds at Elland Road early in the 2002/03 season elicited fulsome praise from fans, media, pundits and even opponents. Wenger described his team as “danger everywhere, tremendous spirit, a privilege to watch. It was total football.” “It was demoralising. They just pass and move, pass and move. You find yourself working for nothing,” said Olivier Dacourt of Leeds. “They are better than the Manchester United team who won the treble and they are even better than Real Madrid. I'm sure Arsenal would beat them.” As Real were at the time the Champions League-winning self-styled ‘Galacticos' featuring Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, Luis Figo and Raúl amongst others, it was certainly a rare accolade from a vanquished foe.