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You are in: Special Events: Sports Personality 2002 |
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![]() Wenger at the Double
![]() Tony Adams and Arsene Wenger celebrate the Double
"Arsene who?" the Highbury crowd chorused when Arsenal unveiled the 18th manager in their history in September 1996. Six years on, they have a resounding answer. In that period Arsene Wenger has revolutionised the club and scaled the summit of English football in the process.
A second Double was the prize for a year of free-flowing football in which the club broke records galore. The scenes of celebration in May were a far cry from the sceptical acclaim he received on his arrival. Club captain Tony Adams thought the new man more schoolmaster than manager. Adams, the hard-drinking fist-clenching Essex boy, and Wenger, the urbane, professorial Frenchman, were poles apart. But after winning four trophies in the twilight of his career, Adams was a convert - as are the fans.
An economics student and former defender of little distinction, Wenger's managerial career took off at Monaco. In seven seasons in the principality, the club never finished outside the top three, winning the title once. They only fell away in the eighth season, ninth place being off-set by a Champions League semi-final berth. Despite overtures from the French Football Federation and Bayern Munich, Wenger stayed loyal. His reward? The sack. After a brief sojourn in Japan, Arsenal came calling and he returned to Europe. A once proud club was seemingly a million miles away from recapturing their former glory. But in Wenger, Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein and his boardroom cohorts struck gold. Dein was convinced that Wenger was the right man for the job and his conviction has been rewarded. The sensational success on the pitch in 2002 is only the tip of the iceberg of the revolution that Wenger has instigated at the Gunners.
He has succesfully blended young and old, European and British and cut out the cancer of the old Arsenal drinking motto "win or lose, get on the booze", making his players wake up to what was expected of them as professionals. A drinking ban, a strict diet and modern, meticulous training methods - a simple but effective strategy. Wenger is the very essence of the modern manager, at home on the training pitch, in the dug-out and with the media. Over the past 12 months he proved that quality in startling style as his team swept all before them with some fabulous football.
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