Soccer Conditioning Drills

As soon as he joined Arsenal, Arsène Wenger set about transforming the face, not only of the Highbury club, but, indirectly, all of English football.

By ditching the old ways of training and adding special diets to the mix – as well as calling on the services of outside experts, which was unheard of in England at the time – football clubs in England started to rethink. It helped his cause, needless to say, when Arsenal won the League and FA Cup double in only his second season in charge.

Gradually, Wenger was able to change what had been a predominantly cautious Arsenal side into a vibrant attacking force, without losing the ability to defend when necessary.

The greatest achievement of his Premier League career – and widely regarded as one of the most outstanding feats in English football ever – was to go the whole of the 2003/04 campaign without suffering a single defeat.

Arsène Wenger belongs to that tradition of managers who were never great players and therefore took to coaching comparatively early in their lives.

With degrees in both Engineering and Economics, and with fluency in Spanish and German as well as French and English, education was very much a priority for him as a young man and he didn’t become a professional with RC Strasbourg – his home town – until 1978, when he was 29 years old. Even then his first team career spanned just 12 matches – in their title-winning season of 1978/79, which included an UEFA cup match.

There can be few football club managers anywhere in the world who are as identified with their team and their style of play as Arsène Wenger. In a profession in which staying in a post for more than two years should qualify you for a testimonial match, the urbane Frenchman has now been at Arsenal for nearly 13 years.

In any other country – that is one with no Sir Alex Ferguson in it – he would be by far the longest-serving manager. You can buy Arsenal tickets online and see his great team for yourself.

Arsenal play a lovely, silky game of football and, when they are in full flight, their Premier League fixtures show them as a team that can match Barcelona. Unfortunately, they don’t match the Catalans in terms of finishing or defending. In fact, in both of those areas they themselves can be matched by quite a few of the ‘lesser’ English Premier League clubs.

It’s such a shame that a team that has the passing ability in it that this Arsenal team has somehow seems to come up short time and time again. Players with the ability of Fabregas, Arshavin, Van Persie, and Walcott should surely have won something in the past few seasons.

So where has it gone wrong? Or maybe it hasn’t gone wrong at all – as some Arsenal fans are bound to argue it’s just a question of time. Or economics. Or something else.

There are three things that stand out: the first is that thinking back to that truly great Arsenal team of a few years ago it’s not just their quality of passing that is remembered. Yes, Pires, Henry, Bergkamp, Ljungberg, etc could pass the ball – but the whole team had a solidity and physicality about it that just doesn’t seem to be there in the present one. When you remember Patrick Vieira, you remember his hardness as much as his undoubted skill. So often now when you see the two teams lining up for pre-match civilities the Arsenal team looks like a junior side compared to the team they’re playing against. That so-important spine running through the team doesn’t seem to be quite right.

Secondly, when you remember Ian Wright, Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp you remember their ruthless precision in making almost every chance count; something today’s strikers are a long way from achieving.

The final thing is that thhis lack of winning trophies has coincided with moving to the new stadium. It’s wonderful to watch Arsenal fixtures at the the stadium – but Arsenal left Highbury in May, 2006 and haven’t won anything since. In the current economic climate with so many clubs having suffered, has the cost of the stadium affected the budget for new players?

Although Arsene Wenger can take players of whom we know very little and make them into superstars, is it possible that this policy has rather been forced on him because most of the money is tied up elsewhere? Find out in the 2010/11 season by reserving your Arsenal tickets now.