Mr Wenger is 65 years and will experience his twentieth league appearance this season. He believes Arsenal are closer to the title than they were before. We agree because The Gunners have gone from WHO WILL LEAVE to WHO WILL COME.

WHEN I SAW FERGUSON LAST SEASON ‘I said, ‘Come on, don’t you miss it?’ ‘He came to meet me after the game when we played at Manchester United.
‘He says no, he’d had enough. He still goes to every game. He has horses. I have no horses.’ RETIREMENT ‘ crosses my mind sometimes, but for no longer than five seconds, because I panic a little bit. I am more committed than ever,’.
‘The number of times you have done it doesn’t count. It is how much you love what you do that counts. And the love is not necessarily diminished by the number of times you’ve done it.
‘Football is new every day. That’s a big quality. It makes you question. With every defeat people say, ‘What’s this guy doing?’
‘You have an exam every three days. You have no way to look back. You have to prepare for the next exam and come out with success

Ferguson Horse

I WANT TO DO WELL FOR ARSENAL
‘I am like everybody: you lose three games and… but when you analyse my time here, you will see I did not lose three games on the trot many times. The job of a manager, as well, is to reduce the time of crisis.
‘I want to do well for the club, and when I leave one day, I want to leave it in a position where it can go on and on.’

‘Big experience helps you anticipate what you will face,’ said Wenger. ‘Even here, there are unpredictable responses. You would not necessarily expect people to insult you on the way to the train.
‘It’s the way society has gone. I can take a distance from that. I know the same people can be excessive.
‘That’s where experience helps. You have a good assessment of who you are and you’re not influenced by what people say, whether it’s too positive or too negative.’

NINE TROPHY-FREE YEARS FOLLOWED BY BACK-TO-BACK FA CUP TITLES

‘What is true is we have stability we didn’t have before,’ said Wenger. ‘I was more exposed to, ‘who will go’ and now the question I get more is, ‘who will come?’
‘Our potential on the market has changed a bit and if you ask me will we win the Premier League, I just say we want to. We will try and give everything but it will be a very open competition.
‘We have a chance. All is going well. Our heaviest defeat last season was 2-0 and it was against Chelsea. We have reduced the gap and I believe we are ready to go further.
‘To guarantee, I cannot do that. You cannot guarantee in the Premier League. Again there are five to six competitors.
‘It’s very difficult to guess how strong the other teams will be. I promise we will fight to win, but it is difficult.’

WOW! THERE ARE TIMES WHEN WENGER KNEW THEY HAD NO TITLE CHANCE
‘When you lose your best players it is impossible,’ he said, with the likes of Samir Nasri, Robin van Persie and Cesc Fabregas in mind. Before that, Patrick Vieira, Ashley Cole and Thierry Henry.
‘You see opponents strengthen when they are already stronger than you,’ he added.
‘You just get into the top four and see others still strengthening. On top of that you’re losing your best players, so it is difficult to be convinced you can still win the league.’
‘I know if I could have won the league or not. The year we lost it at Birmingham (2007-08), we could have won the league.

‘Last year, no, because after six games we were 11 points behind Chelsea and to catch 11 points back was nearly impossible.’
Hearing Wenger talk openly about the exodus of top players and the problem it caused only reinforces the idea that this phase is over.
Arsenal are into the delivery stage of a project which started with the move from Highbury. While questions remain in some positions, a strong squad has been enhanced.
The elite quality of Mesut Ozil, Alexis Sanchez and Petr Cech has been added without destroying the framework.
‘Stability is undervalued and that is what we want to show,’ said Wenger. ‘We have stability and that gives us strength.
‘Chelsea has good stability, especially defensively. They took advantage of it from the start of the season.
‘Last year, we missed our start for different reasons. One was that after the World Cup some players were not mentally ready.
We also had the Champions League qualifier that cost us a lot of energy against Besiktas.
‘But again we have a tricky start — West Ham look to have bought well and Crystal Palace are a strong team. We have to be ready.

WENGER TALKS MANCHESTER UNITED

‘You can take Barcelona or Manchester United, who had a generation and built their success on players who came from within.
‘These are our values and it is our DNA. It’s important we keep that.
‘After, if we can buy the exceptional players, we can compete today but that will not be the basis of our policy.’
United have veered from this philosophy, spending heavily on established international stars. It may be one reason why Ferguson does not miss it.
‘With success they have created huge financial resources and today there is no patience for them to continue what they did,’ said Wenger.
‘They have the financial resources to go with a different policy. And they do not have available players like Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and David Beckham inside the club.
‘Youth talent is spread more through 20 clubs than it was. You cannot group the best English talents at 16 as easily as used to be possible.
‘It would be interesting to study the reason. And it would be interesting to analyse the basic wages of the England Under 18 team 20 years ago, 10 years ago and today.
Then do it in five years with the Under 16 team.’
Wenger looked set to launch into the task. His enthusiasm is undimmed, even if times have changed. Then it seemed as if he had already started.
‘You would have a shock if you knew what the average 18-year-old footballer earned,’ he said.

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Source: Mail

Image Source: PA Wire and Associated Press.