Arsene Wenger will always be appreciated for what he achieved with Arsenal football club. For the trophies, the consistency and the class in which he elevated an Arsenal side looking in the mid-90s like they were headed on a very different path to something great.
The end of Wenger's time at Arsenal wasn’t pretty. From protests to viral fan cam clips dominating the Gunners’ games, eventually, he stood down and left the club entirely.
Wenger's former Arsenal colleague and very good friend David Dein spoke recently of the mistakes the club made not only in their handling of the Frenchman's exit but also the lack of involvement in the club outside of his managerial role post departure. Dein spoke passionately about how Wenger should have surely remained with the club in some capacity.
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"He was a miracle worker, and they just let him go," Dein said. "He left in a similar way to me. I thought the club owed Arsene a duty of care, at least a discussion. 'We need a change, but how do you want this to be done? Do you want to be involved? What can we do? Would you like a different role? Would you prefer to exit elegantly?' You must have dialogue. It didn't happen in my case, it didn't happen in his. And that really hurt him. I would have done it differently.
"Look, you don't find a brain like his every day of the week. He's an Arsenal man, 22 years at the club. Wasn't his knowledge worth cultivating? Look at where he is now. So he's not good enough for Arsenal, but he is good enough to be head of global development for FIFA, in charge of 211 countries.
"He should have been used by us surely, his knowledge, his skill, his encyclopaedic awareness of players. He's got to be used."
Could Arsene Wenger have been given an executive role higher up in the club to oversee the transition? Potentially, yes.
However, it was in my view the correct decision to have a clean break from Wenger. Arsenal needed to move on from the Frenchman who had seen football catch up and eventually overtake his ideas that had been monumental in the late 90s’ evolution of the English game.
In the late 2010s however, Arsenal were regressing. Having fallen out of the Champions League, the Gunners continued to slide even after the appointment of a new coach in Unai Emery who was sacked with the club in 11th place.
Mikel Arteta came in and it has taken more than two seasons to finally arrest the club’s slide and a considerable amount of investment from the ownership to overhaul the squad. Yet Arsenal sit top of the table at present, but with the likelihood of a Champions League return is the minimum expectation for the side this season.
The introduction of Edu as technical director, Richard Garlick as Head of Football Operations and Per Mertesacker as the Head of the Arsenal Academy has given the roles that were overseen by Wenger to several different people.
Arsenal needed to take this approach and had Wenger moved upstairs, potentially his influence that sadly contributed to the beginning of the aforementioned slide might have not seen it addressed as quickly as it has been since. That said, if what Dein says regarding his exit not being done correctly is the case, the former regime who oversaw his exit made up of Ivan Gazidis, Sven Mislintat, Raul Sanllehi and others are perhaps better off elsewhere and, thankfully, they are.
All have since left, some very soon after Wenger left himself in the case of Gazidis. Arteta, a student of Wenger’s and a former club captain of his, has kept the class, the ambition and the objectives at the club as he hunts to return this side back to the top; reiterating time after time that the expectation at Arsenal is to win every single game.
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