Please let it be this:
UFGN wrote:Wenger...... Give him a statue. Yes he should have one for his successes at Arsenal. But don't think for a minute that it erases the bad.
Look at it this way, perhaps Wenger was the one holding it all together when the board wasn't sure what to do? We had an internal tussle between Usmanov and Kroenke for years. The boardroom didn't back Wenger as they should have.
I know we will disagree, but my two cents on this is Wenger's naivety to identify himself as Arsenal, hence, he acted upon as Arsenal's custodian rather than Arsenal manager.
Look at how we've been since he left, or once the Gazidis/Wenger cold war began.
These bits from Wenger's documentary were quite revealing for me:
Once we moved into the (new) stadium, between one and two, we moved to three and four. We lost our best players... Before, we lost them at 30+. Now, we lost them at 25 plus.
To work with restricted resources and keep the club in a position where we could pay our debts back. Between 2006 and 2015, I personally think I did my best job.
I regret. I should have gone somewhere else. I identified myself with the club completely. And that was the mistake I made.
Now there is no special reason for me to go there. All the rest is purely emotional and that is less important.
I don't consider Zidane to be an elite manager. But Zidane is someone who I admire for being street smart and strategic. He knew when to leave Real Madrid. He didn't accept being belittled by the club/board. The first time around, he left because he disagreed with Perez regarding the post-Ronaldo rebuild. The second time, he left after Real board members starting planting false stories about him.
Dein does mention that Wenger wanted to leave after the boardroom drama in 2007 but he (Dein) requested Wenger to stay. After that, Wenger wanted to see the project through. Wenger should have left in 2011 instead of protecting the board. He was the best manager in the world. Yet, it ended so badly for him.
Looking at the astronomical money City, Chelsea, and United have spent... Even Liverpool under Klopp have spend loads of money, yet Wenger achieved so much with a negative net spend until 2012.
Wenger was too attached to Arsenal. Unlike many other managers.
Dixon conceded that Wenger turned down the biggest jobs to stay at Arsenal, and how Arsenal was nice to him too. Sure, Arsenal was. But Arsenal has been nicer than nice to Arteta, to Granit Xhaka. Arsenal was beyond nice to Fabregas and van Persie. So?
Ultimately, my lesson from all of this is to know when to walk away. Wenger couldn't. He acted like a fan, to his own detriment. The board did him nasty. If the Kroenkes had backed Wenger as much as they are backing Arteta, things might have turned different.
It's just sad. We had a generational manager and we wasted him. Partly because Wenger was the eternal romantic, mostly because of the circumstances.
Vieira mentioned that Wenger wasn't even pushed out of the back door, he was pushed out of the back window. SAF added that Wenger kept Arsenal in Europe with a threadbare budget, yet fans (and the club) blamed him for Arsenal's "failure" to win the League.
I still don't get why Arsenal offered him that extension in 2017. Wenger signed it because he was obsessed with Arsenal. But Kroenke and Gazidis, they should have known better. They did him nasty—offering him that contract amidst so much animosity, then kicking him out mid-way.
Wenger didn't know when to walk away. He mentions that he sacrificed his family life for Arsenal. But he's glad that he has a daughter at least. Lol. He was/is a fan. I just wished he left sooner. We forced out our greatest manager. It didn't have to end like this.
Oh well.
P.S.
That documentary is awful. I mean it when I say that. From a filmmaking standpoint, it's unacceptable. But as a Gooner, we'll still enjoy it for obvious reasons.