Wenger’s ramble

It was a bright September day, a new season at Arsenal, and a nervous North London Derby. Nerves were raw because Spurs had pushed Arsenal all throughout the previous 2012/13 season for the coveted 4th place trophy and had looked like they should overtake Arsenal easily thanks to a break out season by Welsh forward Gareth Bale.

But in March 2013 Tottenham manager Andre Villas-Boas declared that Arsenal were in a “negative spiral” and confidently said that it would be very difficult for Arsenal to finish above Spurs that spring. Instead, Tottenham collapsed, Arsenal got the results they needed, and the Gunners finished just one point above their rivals in the League Table.

On September 1st we were already four matches into the new season (2013/14) and Arsenal had just won home and away against Fenerbahce, qualifying for their 16th straight season in the Champions League. Spurs had lost talismanic striker Gareth Bale to Real Madrid, and brought in Roberto Soldado to replace him. These were the good ole days when Tottenham would routinely sell top talent for absurd prices and then turn around and use that money to buy tin soldiers.

Arsenal dominated Spurs right from kickoff. Santi Cazorla burned Hugo Lloris’ palms with a good free kick and struck a second free kick under the wall but just grazed the outside of the post. Cazorla also set up Olivier Giroud for a leaping salmon header on a corner.

Thomas Rosicky – who always seemed to pop up with one of his best games when he played against Spurs – set up Theo Walcott in tons of space on the edge of the box. Walcott took a half touch to kill the ball and spun on a Spurs back line who had dozed off for a second. Suddenly they were in a panic. Walcott sent in a daisy cutter across the box, Olivier Giroud made a run in front of his marker, and with the deftest of left-foot touches, poked past keeper and into the short side of net. Arsenal won 1-0, Tottenham had had a few moments of bother, but overall Wenger’s men played very well and looked liked they deserved the three points.

Arsene Wenger stopped for a post-match interview with Sky Sports, near a thin wall plastered with little rectangular advertisements, and the first question he was asked wasn’t about Giroud’s goal, how his team played, or anything about football at all: he was asked whether Arsenal were planning to buy anyone. There were less than 24 hours left in the transfer season and the guy with the microphone wanted to know if Wenger and Arsenal were going to make a signing.

Wenger smiled. It was the sort of deep, knowing, smile you see when someone can’t control their glee. It was clear he didn’t want to say too much, he stumbled over his words a bit, saying that he would be sure to let them know right away if they signed anyone. The guy with the mic pressed him. Wenger smiled again.

“Maybe we will have a good surprise for you.” He looked off camera at someone. Smiles again. And then looked back at the man asking him questions.

That good surprise was Mesut Ozil. Arsenal had been working all summer on a big money transfer and were about to land one of the biggest names in football from Real Madrid. The road to Ozil hadn’t been very direct; Arsenal had lined up Gonzalo Higuain in the early part of the summer window but quickly dumped him when Luis Suarez’ agents told the Gunners that he had a “release clause”.

When that deal fell through – because there was no release clause – Arsenal fans were in a state of what could be called “bother.” It was one of the most heated and ugly times to be a fan at the club. The fans were divided on Wenger’s tenure with many calling for him to be fired. But in one fell swoop, Arsenal fans (nearly all) did have something to get excited about.

In Wenger’s autobiography (Wenger: my life and lessons in red and white) he talks about that transfer saying:

From 2013, our heads were above water, financially. That was the moment when we made one of our most iconic transfers: Mesut Özil. It was our biggest signing for years. I had spotted the young player when he was with Bremen and I had almost recruited him before Real did. He chose the Spanish club on that occasion and stayed there for three years. I loved his playing style. He came to us from a Spanish league that was more technical but not as physically rough as the English league. That required him to adapt. He fit easily into the team, he had great technical flair, he was in a setting that suited him, and he was happy. In 2013, with him on the team, we started the season well and were at the top of the league for several days. It was a mixed season for Özil: journalist and supporters were waiting to trip him up, we finished fourth in the premiership, we qualified for the champions league, and we won the FA cup in 2014, a long awaited trophy that ended the season in wonderful style at Wembley.

From there, Wenger spends two more sentences lavishing praise on Özil for his technical ability, likens him to a master artists, defends him against people who want him to play “200 mph”, and warns that “being hard on him doesn’t work.”

Then, mid-paragraph, he switches gears:

In 2014, we were looking to get Luis Suarez over. We had an agreement with the player and his agent. But the agent claimed that there was a clause: with an offer above £40m, Liverpool would be obliged to let the player go. But thanks to an indiscretion within Liverpool, I found out that this clause never existed. To check whether this was true, we offered £40,000,001. This may have seemed ludicrous, I admit. But Liverpool did not want to sell Suarez, they could afford to keep him, and there was already an offer from Barça on the horizon.

In this one example, we have most of the problems with Arsene Wenger’s autobiography: if you are expecting inside information about anything, forget it (“he’s too classy for that”); if you are looking for clear, concise, writing, forget it; maybe you’re hoping for some of his famous philosophical musings, there are a few; and if you’re looking for entertaining stories about Wenger’s 22 years at Arsenal or his career in football, you will be left wanting.

What you get instead is largely a rambling mess which almost always veers off from the story of his career and into assessments of players’ abilities with the occasional brief blurb about how the player came to his attention. It is the weirdest book I have read in years.

In the chapter about how he moved from Japan to England, he talks about intentionally studying English as a young man because he thought it would serve him well later in life. He recalls meeting David Dein as a stroke of luck – asking a woman for a light for his cigarette – and how the two struck up an immediate friendship.

Then he moves the chapter to describe his innovations, most of which will feel well worn by an Arsenal supporter who has read any book about Arsene Wenger. He then starts talking about the players on that team, it feels sort of right to do so but as soon as he’s finished talking about Adams, Keown, Wright, Bergkamp (small blurbs about some of these players) and the others from that team, he suddenly gives us a bulleted list of many of the players he has coached and their qualities. Arshavin? Yep, he’s there. Coquelin makes an appearance. Why? I don’t know. Mertesacker, Szczesny, Vermaelen, Gallas, Fabianski, Gibbs.. why are these players being listed here in this section of the book that is supposed to be talking about the late 90s? Wouldn’t it make sense to put this in some other part of the book?

This happens is most chapters. Not necessarily bulleted lists but he often finishes a small story about a part of his career and suddenly spends several pages on former players. Wenger, it seems, loves to talk about the qualities he appreciates in the players he brought to the team. Spotting talent is one of his best attributes and absolutely deserved its own chapter. But because the details of his stories are so thin, and because most of the time he’s just telling us what he did instead of describing it, or worse, not even telling us a story at all, these segments come across less as a deliberate example of Wenger’s immense talent for spotting players and more as simple filler.

It’s not filler, though. These chapters, the way that everything is organized, the flow of the book is just how Wenger wanted it.

This book is very Arsene Wenger. He reportedly turned down the help of a ghost-writer and wrote the entire thing himself. And as we know from his career at Arsenal, that is Wenger’s way: he literally looked after every tiny detail when he was at the club.

Arsene Wenger’s autobiography is written by Arsene Wenger and it very much reads like a book written by an amateur. And given the sort of messy organization within the chapters, one who probably didn’t listen to his editors.

But. There are some wonderful parts and despite the loose writing, lack of detail, and complete absence of anything even remotely controversial, I’m not at all angry that I spent the money on this book.

The opening chapters about his childhood in Alsace, his early playing days, and his early coaching career are wonderful. You learn why Wenger was the manager that he was for Arsenal. He regails us with his love of spotting talent and how he loves giving underdogs a chance. He works feverishly hard at his job. He makes every penny count at a club as if it was his own – telling us a story about negotiating personally for a set of soccer balls for training. These are the values he learned in France as a young man and what we saw day to day in his tenure at Arsenal.

And the final few chapters are evocative. He does hold back a bit on criticizing Arsenal, but even though he knew the fans had been turning against him, you get a real sense that leaving the club was devastating. And it was definitely the club breaking up with him, not the other way around.

And if you’re like me, looking for one of those thought-provoking philosophical moments, he does give you some of those as well. My favorite is his idea about “technical empathy.”

Passing the ball is communicating with another person; it’s being in the service of another person. It’s crucial. For the pass to be a good one, the player has to put himself in the position of the person who is going to receive it. It’s an act of intelligence and generosity, what I call technical empathy.

This concept isn’t something I’ve ever consciously considered but it has always been a part of my game. In the instant when I receive the ball and look for a teammate, I visualize how I want the ball to get to him/her. And not only that, but the longer we have played together, the more “empathy” I build for how they like the ball. Some players can take drilled passes and some can’t. But I always feel how they would want the pass to come to them and I get frustrated with myself when I can’t make that happen.

In defense, I also use a form of empathy. Almost everyone does, I think. I can read the opposition, how they want to make a pass, where they are moving, before they perform that action. Most players do this. They also can sense things like panic, fear, and anger or frustration, and can use that to their advantage on the field.

You feel these things, not just out of the ether, but because you can put yourself in that player’s position for a moment. You can feel how you want the ball to come to the outside of the right boot, how the opponent is going to play a pass between the lines, or how a defender doesn’t really want the ball when you’re closing him down.

Wenger’s book isn’t great. It’s sloppily constructed, it rambles, it’s overly brief, and it’s devoid of even the basic descriptions of events that you would expect from a book about a man who coached football for 40 years. In short, it’s very clearly the work of someone who isn’t a writer and didn’t listen to his editors.

And yet, for these moments like his description of technical empathy, or his very heartfelt and sorrowful story about being pushed out of the team he’d dedicated his entire life to, it will be interesting to most Arsenal fans. Though, I might try to get a used copy if I were you.

Qq