Arsene Wenger leaves Arsenal - professor leaves the Emirates with honours.

Arsene Wenger leaves Arsenal- the professor leaves the Emirates with honours.

In the end he was never likely to be pushed but he left with a good deal of dignity, humility and decorum. Arsene Wenger, after 22 years of silver salver service and golden years of football management, has finally taken his leave of the club he's never likely to forget but in recent years found himself to be  the unfortunate victim of circumstances. Then the Frenchman was almost hounded out of his job by Arsenal fans who they felt had not only run out of ideas but also the admirable capacity to win the Premier League again.

There are times when a football manager must feel like the loneliest man in the world, insulted, almost psychologically abused, tormented and rejected by the supporters who once idolised him Many was the occasion when Wenger must have felt both marginalised and horribly mistreated by an Arsenal fan base who probably felt they should have won the Premier League every season. This though is the kind of wishful  thinking that goes against the law of averages at every level of sport.

So it's time to look back at the remarkable achievements of Arsene Wenger. Wenger was the Arsenal professor, the brilliant analytical brain, the deep thinking and cerebral football manager, the first manager to impose the strictest of dietary regimes, rigorous fitness programmes, a superbly disciplined approach to eating the right food, conditioning on the most advanced level and an obsessive commitment to playing the game the right way.

When Wenger walked into the old Highbury during the summer of 1996, many of the hardened snipers and critics were convinced that Arsenal hadn't really researched this one. In fact so unknown was Wenger that even the security guard outside the Highbury marbled halls could have been forgiven for denying the Frenchman entry and insisted that he either show his application form or just confirm his identity.

At the time Bruce Rioch, who had just brought the magnificently stylish Dennis Bergkamp to Arsenal, had played out his contract at Arsenal, leaving Arsenal in its healthiest state for years. Admittedly they had yet to win any major honour although they had beaten Sheffield Wednesday in both the League and FA Cup Final in 1993 under George Graham. But their last League title- the 1989 old First Division League championship with the final kick victory against Liverpool at Anfield, had felt like some remote island and many years distant.

Then a gentleman wearing distinctive glasses, with a thick thatch of predominantly black and just a few white patches of white hair, held up the red and white scarf of Arsenal. Little did we know then what would follow. Nobody had heard of the Frenchman with an utterly undistinguished managerial career at Monaco and who had only come to prominence because somebody at Japanese club Grampus Eight had seen hidden potential in him. 

Overnight Arsenal were a team transformed, emerging from a chrysalis or perhaps they were some wondrous changeable chameleon, no longer the subject of ridicule, mickey taking and parody. No longer were Arsenal boring, boring and boring and blissfully content to put up the defensive shutters when a goal had been scored. Gone were the days when Tony Adams, Lee Dixon, Steve Bould and Nigel Winterburn would throw a colossal cordon across their back four deliberately and cold bloodedly luring teams into the most wretchedly premeditated offside trap.

But the days of the late and great David Rocastle, Paul Davis and Paul Merson had now passed into some vast footballing museum. Rocastle had quite the most intellectual of all footballing outlooks, comfortably controlling the ball, leading by example and looking around him constantly for the most appropriately telling of passes in the right area and the right time.

 Davis was tall, absolutely authoritative at all times, never ruffled or flustered and a man who became something of a fully qualified midfield engineer for Arsenal, always tweaking and tuning the Arsenal midfield with the most skilful of touches. Sadly too there was Paul Merson, who though one of Arsenal's most immensely popular of players and a rightly heralded England player, could hardly control his private life and the debilitating vices that came with his talent. There was the agonising partiality to drink and alcohol, the endless spiral of gambling and general wine, women and song debauchery.

And yet in the summer of 1996 all of those high jinks, high life decadence and nightclub shenanigans came to an end at the old Highbury. Arsene Wenger, the ultimate disciplinarian, the no nonsense task master was having none of this. The Frenchman's blue print philosophy on football bore no relation to the wildly outrageous antics that had so disfigured English football since the late 1970s. Wenger demanded sophistication on the pitch, manners off the pitch, a correct dress sense and a fastidious attention to detail on the training pitch.

Soon the players arrived for Wenger in the smartest of procession. Wenger discovered a promising Juventus winger called Thierry Henry, an equally as competent midfield player called Patrick Vieira, another startlingly fast winger in Anders Limpar and a Dutch wing sorcerer in Marc Overmars. Then Wenger discovered a blond bombshell in Emmanuel Petit. In a matter of years Wenger had mixed up all of the disparate ingredients and overnight fashioned a football team with the most artistic inclinations, the most vivid imagination and a passing game cut from the finest cloth.

In no time at all Wenger had guided Arsenal to the Double, a whole conveyor belt of FA Cup Final victories and then there was the season when Arsenal remained unbeaten from August to May. These were the 'Invincibles' an Arsenal team who went an entire Premier League season unbeaten and never looked likely as if they'd ever lose at any point. Of course there were close shaves but when Wenger lifted the Premier League trophy for the umpteenth time it seemed as if the Frenchman would continue to produce unstoppably mesmeric and winning teams for the rest of his career.

Suddenly the rot set in and after beating Sheffield Wednesday, Newcastle, Southampton, Hull, Aston Villa and Chelsea in a dizzying merry go round of FA Cup victories narrowly missing out on the Champions League trophy against Barcelona and then notching up all of those much coveted Premier League trophies, Wenger seemed to run out of steam. The well preserved engine had now broken down, the irresistible momentum had now gone and the stardust had been blown away for good.

Yesterday Arsene Wenger, undoubtedly one of the greatest Frenchmen ever to lead an English football club drove out of the club he'd painstakingly moulded, chipped, carved away at and finally smoothed away all of the residue rough edges. This was the man who turned both Denis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry into one of the most remarkably versatile, passionate and multi talented footballers ever to pull on a red Arsenal shirt. Wenger was a master of reinvention, a natural motivator of players and dedicated to the cause of smooth, aesthetically eye pleasing football.

The last few months and weeks and Arsenal have not been pleasant ones and there remains a horrible air of anti climax at the Emirates. Wenger may well sign off  with a Europa League trophy which could sweeten a pill soured by those persistent disappointments, failures and near misses. For Bertie Mee and George Graham read now Arsene Wenger. Sometimes football sets the highest of standards and the achievements of both Mee and Graham could never come even remotely close to the stunningly studious Arsene Wenger, a man who not only changed football culture for good but converted Arsenal into a compulsively watchable and at times astoundingly brilliant team. Au revoir Monsieur Wenger. One corner of North London may never ever forget you.