Arsène Wenger ( Arsenal ), age 67;

Old School Le Professeur

"I believe one of the best things about managing people is that we can influence lives in a positive way. That's basically what a manager is about. When I can do that, I am very happy."

"For me, motivation is a person who has the capability to recruit the resources he needs to achieve a goal."

"The moral values I've learnt in my life I've learnt through football."

The Professor has some impressive diplomas in his personal life; in engineering of the University of Strasbourg and also a master degree in economics.
He speaks French, German and English and comprehends Italian, Spanish and Japanese.

Arsène was one of the first to insist of using math, statistics and in general more sophisticated methods of analyzing both his opponents and his coaching methods.

Others describe him as super humble, nice, charming and a person that lives a quiet life.

Mr. Wenger believes he can tell the personality of a man just by looking at what watch he is wearing;

"It is not really an obsession. It is a joy. It can explain the personality of a man...It was the first piece of jewellery I had in my life. At the time, when you did your Communion at the age of 14, your godfather would give you a watch. It was very formal.
It marked my journey from life as a child to an adult. I could have started smoking at that age If I had wanted to. My father did not tell me that it was not allowed. I was in the world of grown-ups. Because physically I was capable to work with my arms as a man. It was like that in the countryside world. I like to look at the watches that people wear."

Even with all his love for education and a rational path from which he does his job, he describes his learning ways from being a child as very important and as many of us will agree, Wenger thinks that you can learn alot from visiting pubs:

"There is no better psychological education than growing up in a pub because when you are five or six years old, you meet all different people and hear how cruel they can be to each other.
From an early age you get a practical, psychological education to get into the minds of people. It is not often that a boy of five or six is always living with adults in a little village. I learned about tactics and selection from the people talking about football in the pub – who plays on the left wing and who should be in the team."

An old survey in 2007 showed that Wenger is the only manager in England who made a profit from transfers.
A great example of his flair is Anelka, who signed for Arsenal for £500,000, but two years later it was sold to Real Madrid for £23.5 million.
Consistently and with the rare exceptions of two seasons out of the 17 between 1996-97 and 2012-13,
Wenger has produced teams that have either out-performed expectation on the pitch given the resources available to him off it, or at least met those expectations:

From the legendary Highbury stadium that had the capacity of 38 000,
Arsenal's politics and financial vision for the future under the leadership of Arsène Wenger resulted in the club moving to the Emirates Stadium in 2006 that can hold 60 000 fans, today the club has almost no debts, it is recorded that Arsenal has around £6mil in debt which is almost nothing comapred to their rivals.
No club in the league can match Arsenals growth in match day income over the last 10 years or so:

"In 2006 the most difficult period of my life started...We had restricted finances, we had to pay back a huge amount of money and we had to sell our best players.
We had to stay in the top, to stay in the Champions League and at least to make 54,000 people attend.
There are many debates when you start building a stadium, how big can it be? It’s quite simple.
At the time it was £4,000 a seat. You multiply that by 60,000 it’s £240million. Plus we had to buy the soil, all the businesses we had to buy out. It went to over £420m.
We had to pay a huge amount of money back every year. That’s why we had to stay in the Champions League.
That was, for me, the biggest period of pressure between 2006 and 2014. If you told me today I’d do that again I would say ‘no thank you, I’ll leave that to someone else." - Arsène Wenger

One of the football icons that changed the game both on and off the pitch, the man that made a typical "boring Arsenal" to an attacking modern team and club in every sense of the word.

Arsène Wenger evolved with the club with his revolutionary training methods but also with the modern nutrition and diet ever since he came to the club:

"He changed their way of eating to what was known as the Evian water and broccoli diet!" David Dein, the former Arsenal vice-chairman added:"A lot of other English clubs followed that example."
Wenger made training routines that helped to extend the careers of older players:"I think in England you eat too much sugar and meat and not enough vegetables."

When Arsène took over Arsenal, he and Chelsea's player-coach Ruud Gullit were the only foreign managers in the Premier League, Wenger has been a unique football figure in the world of football and he continues to move forward with his Gunners to new challenges.

With this post I encourage other users to post their own tributes to some of the coolest managers the Premier League has or has had in the past, the goal is to appreciate football together, thank you all for taking the time to read and much respect to those that write a bit about other amazing personalities that make this Premier League so special.

Well done and well deserved! I would give a thumbs up on the post but it seems I capped with the "This or That" thread. haha

Great post !

Superb post mate! :D Must have took a while to do, but its really was worth it. Make me appreciate Wenger a lot more than before. :)

Awesome.

Im curious now, how his accumulated cash Net from 2012 to 2017?

Wenger was one of the best. The professor. No doubt but he failed to adapt to the game in the last 5 years. Thats exactly the problem he has now. I have always had utmost respect for him, and think Arsenal wont be the same without him.

Thanks guys, I didn't know much about Wenger but now after posting this I really respect him, the info I got suprised me to say the least, it's impressive how competent of a manager he is.

@tuan_jinn I think from what I researched, the years after 2012 till 2016 Arsenal has spent over £100 mil, from £109mil to £111mil if I remember correctly.
That amount is still less than the rivals of Wenger but it shows that he would have spent more money before 2013 if he had the means to do so, it's interesting that even if he had more money to spend it's said that buying new players doesn't automatically make the team better.

Wenger has the data to support his way of doing business, the only theory that goes somewhat against him is that it's lets say proven that teams that have a big wage budget spending over the course of much time have a higher probability to win, which is logical because it practically means that the team that pays a lot for wages has good players no?

Now I can't really say that other teams have been doing better in these terms because it's not the same when you have a billionaire like Man City nowadays or huge debts like Manchester United but it goes to show that football is much more than just the trophies won and lost, many factors are in play and Wenger even if not winning titles has shown that in a hard competition his competence was keeping Arsenal among top 4 teams for a long time.

I actually thought writing about Jürgen Klopp's personality and how he sees football but then I realised I know very little about Wenger, the only thing I could guess is his quiet personality and I knew some facts about his best seasons here and there...

Very nice post/analysis ;) I'm glad I read this.

Awesome thread Golazo. Thank you for taking the time to write this, fellow gunner.

I will never forget his legendary days.

After 22 years in Arsenal he's leaving and the club gave him the historical silverware, the Invicibles title

@Golazo Well deserved in my opinion, after being there for so long.

awesome thread, would be nice if psg can take him, I just want to see if it's the club that had failed him or he failed the club which doesn't sound right lol.

@Golazo +1