Thread by @nonewthing

I'm more critical on Arsene Wenger than most. I feel he could have done a bit more to prevent/arrest our sporting decline and I feel he had first-mover advantages but didn't really continue to effectively adapt to a changing world beyond his usual MO.

a super thread/

My criticisms are clear. Wenger was a genius who accelerated the moving landscape of English football but eventually got left behind by the very same environment he progressed.

He had innovative fitness and athletic management ideas that catapulted Arsenal's athletic potential

to the top but that same strength became a massive weakness in later years as European rivals home and abroad evolved. I'd like to examine our injury history in his late and early eras. I'm assuming that there's probably a significant difference there, too.

Another example that I like to use to illustrate Wenger's decline is his scouting and recruitment operations.

Earlier on, many recruitment markets were underutilized. Wenger, for instance, was the first to take France seriously as a talent hotbed in England.

He often recruited elite talents as young as contractually and financially possible (Van Persie, Fabregas, etc), then groomed them in-house. As well as other recruitment ideas.

At that time, it was groundbreakingly effective and allowed Arsenal to keep up the pace.

But once all of Europe started doing this, Wenger failed to innovate new recruitment strategies to continue to keep Arsenal at the top.

Markets we previously competed for their best talents in became too competitive.

We lost our free runs.

https://twitter.com/nonewthing/status/1469725662156099586?t=W-R--iq7eHrweWZWw4lwUA&s=19

Wenger missed out on whole golden generations of France, Brazil, Germany and Belgium.

I have this idea that countries have periods of bloom and wilting in terms of talent production (for whatever reasons) and that at club level, recruitment must be on the lookout for new blooms.

You might call it luck or whatever but why was Pep Guardiola there for Spain's golden generation, Germany's golden generation and now England's golden generation?

I'd be very disinclined to call it coincidence. I think it's a show of his capacity to tell where the next bloom is.

Pep didn't groom these golden generations. Pique, Xavi, Iniesta, etc were all already elite talents before he came on the scene. Same for England and Germany. He just so happened to be there when it was happening. Pure luck or scheming eye?

In any case, Wenger missed these.

Shopping for talents in a country's period of golden generation talent, at whatever level you do it, means you are more likely to come up with frighteningly effective players for your football.

See the likes of Willock, Ramsey, Balogun, Tomori, Toney, Tammy in England.

Not the very best but just shopping for English players means you have a higher shot of getting a top player in a choked-up golden generation.

Top clubs cannot afford to be missing out on too many such periods. Klopp's Liverpool was Brazilian, English and African (not a country)

(Using Africa as like a talent producing region on the whole here because that is how football currently perceives the continent teeming with over 50 football-mad countries).

Pep's City was English, Brazilian with a dash of the Portuguese and Spanish.

You have to essentially shop for a talent or two or three in those golden gen periods in certain countries.

In 2017, when another wave of French and Portuguese golden generations were already blooming, we made no bets in those markets beyond Lacazette.

Lord knows how many French central defenders we missed out on. For comparison, in the next season when Wenger had gone, the club made bets on two certain French talents named Guendouzi and Saliba.

No bets from Germany or Argentina or Belgium from 2014-2017 beyond a certain Ozil.

Arsene Wenger lost his edge, maybe inevitably from trying to stir a super club aright almost all by himself as it regards key decision making. If the club was not so reliant on him, maybe he could have had the freedom of mind to read the shifting sands and current.

I felt he could have done more in a few more areas but that is probably not entirely his fault. Ask even a super genius to stretch himself and plug too many gaps in an organization and you start to get declining levels of quality return in those areas, not noticeably at first.

Imagine Pep Guardiola was highly responsible for the fiscal policy and management of City, staff recruitment, player recruitment, long-term strategy and planning, culture setting, bla bla bla.

He'd suddenly be no longer able to pay keen attention to tactical and recruiting

detail, areas which are his best strengths.

This is where the sporting or technical director comes into play (role is defined and practiced a bit differently at every club).

In essence, the director is responsible for the medium and long-term health of the club.

Things like appointing the head coach, recruiting backroom and management staff, academy organization and development pathway as well as key decision-making in recruitment are the common duties of a sporting director.

In essence, there are not enough Wengers in football for

every club to be running a one-man ship. But there are good enough head coaches so the other off-pitch duties are handled by others (the director and staff).

Even if you happen to have a genius like Mikel Arteta, as much as their influence inevitably spreads throughout the club,

the sporting director must make sure that the club's asset (in this case the genius manager) is maximized. That includes keeping him focused and paying attention to his most important duties.

Of course, this balancing requires trust, intimacy and mutual respect between both.

If a genius manager believes he can't trust the director to lead well in a certain area, it can lead to undermining and split focus and general negative energy. If a director feels a genius manager is going overboard, it can lead to resentment, undermining and general negativity.

Both of them fully trusting one another leads to a case of both deferring on certain areas to another. If Mikel wants more of a say in recruitment for instance, Edu can accept that Mikel is super good in this area, too, and allow him to have a defining say.

Mikel may have ideas about how to run the academy, but he may give up on imposing himself in this area and just trust Edu to do the best.

Focus, division of labour, maximizing strengths, unity and vertical propulsion in the work space.

Arsene Wenger didn't always have this.

The worse it got in some areas, the more Wenger probably felt he had to stretch himself. It's like the one man on the one-man ship trying to put out a thousand fires by himself. No matter how much of a genius he is, the vessel is too big, the areas affected and affectable are too

many to effectively deal with, leading to unattended problems and shoddily done work.

The vessel sinks further into the water, the genius stands hands on his waist, aware he cannot stop the inevitable. Banners of 'Wenger Out' fly in the air. It is the end.

To better understand the role, job and duties of a sporting director, read this from Dan Ashworth, Newcastle and former Brighton director.

trainingground.guru/articles/dan-a…

This was why the European organizational model caught fire and spread quickly in England. From a minority of clubs to literally the whole pyramid.

*Correct as of early 2022.

One of the responsibilities of the head coach is to set and maintain the culture of the dressing room. When your head coach is also responsible for a million other things that becomes impossible to focus on. Wenger needed a quick solution.

I suspect that this quick solution was responsible for the decline of the club's internal culture. Wenger maybe relied on senior players to keep the dressing room (might inform the change in recruitment focus to older, more experienced types) while he attended to other things.

It got really bad and the situation spiralled out of hand. Bandages don't work when so many other things require surgery.

Wenger was stretched beyond measure.

But, amidst all this, it is easy to forget what the genius has done.

Ultimately, Wenger fixed Arsenal long-term. He was a manager who was also attending to the future potential of Arsenal football club. We were not as privileged as others. He set about making us privileged.

Things started deteriorating and the ship began to sink, but crucially, he changed the ship from a ferry to a cruise liner and set it in the right direction.

Wenger constructed the vision of our future, as one man.

Arsene Wenger's legacy should not just be judged based on him as a manager but also as a sporting director who stretched himself to breaking point for Arsenal Football Club.

Mourinho called him a specialist in failure but Wenger failed personally so Arsenal could succeed.

So, yes, you may be harsh on Wenger the legendary coach, but Wenger was also a legendary sporting director.

In this perspective, his achievements are without parallel in the modern age. Last time we saw something like that was Johan Cruyff.

Arsene Wenger stands above all.