United And Arsenal: Players, Managers And Hype
Independent: Arsène Wenger narrows his eyes, folds his arms and says that he will never reveal exactly what happened on 24 October 2004 when Sir Alex Ferguson had pizza thrown at him by Wenger’s Arsenal players.
“I don’t know Ferguson well enough to say that I am friends with him. I respect him for what he has done, and for what he is doing in the job,” Wenger says. “That’s it.”
About the same time yesterday lunchtime in south Manchester, Ferguson tiptoes around the subject of his relationship with Wenger – as much as a man like Ferguson ever tiptoes. He praises Wenger’s decision to dispense with Thierry Henry in the summer – “He had served his time” – and sympathises with the big calls facing top managers. “You have to make some crucial decision and some bold decisions,” he says.
Yesterday, before their teams met for the 34th time in almost 11 years, these two brilliant, awkward men were cajoled into revealing what it is about each other they like and loathe. Once again they gave precious little away. Wenger does not share the same English obsession with laying bare the emotional details. Perhaps Ferguson is saving his version for the update of his 1999 autobiography, which will be a blockbuster when it comes. The only way to really understand the psychology of these two will be today at the Emirates Stadium for the marquee fixture of the Premier League season so far.
Lots of half-baked theories have been offered on the Wenger-Ferguson dynamic over the years, plenty of old guff about the cultured Frenchman against the son of a Govan shipyard timekeeper. It is a nonsense that overlooks the fact that Wenger grew up in the austerity of post-war France and it completely undersells Ferguson’s tough brand of intelligence and intuition. But put the sociology aside and consider a different question: how are these two men similar?
As the Arsenal versus Manchester United fixture is once again the game between the two main Premier League title contenders, there is a great truth about these two managers that should be grasped. They are both in charge of teams playing football that is attacking, thrilling and memorable. It is a rebellion against the safer, conservative elements who have held sway in recent years. For once in a league that is hyped to the point of frenzy, today’s is a game that is genuinely worth the anticipation.
Ferguson was busy reminding everyone yesterday that he had foreseen Arsenal’s renaissance – a point he made about his old rivals in the pre-season tour to Asia. So he saw this new Arsenal team coming? “Absolutely. You remember what I said here before the season started, that there was no way Arsenal were going to be 20 points behind Manchester United again?” he said. “I knew there was going to be a strong effort from them and they’ve added that maturity that the young players have got – will get – in a new season. So I expected them to be challenging and they’ve done very well.”
Not many sides go to Anfield and tutor Liverpool in the merits of a passing game as Wenger’s did on Sunday. “I feel Manchester United and Arsenal play attacking football, more or less successfully, but I think there is a change of style now,” Wenger said. “Chelsea want to play a more risky game. What is important is we keep our style. There is room for improvement on our side, because we are very young. We are very, very hungry for success.”
Who will teach the new players about the sides’ old enmity now that Roy Keane is no longer around to seek out Patrick Vieira in the long-gone cramped Highbury tunnel and Ruud van Nistelrooy and Martin Keown have left the stage? Wenger made the appropriate remarks about the managers’ responsibility not to stoke up this fixture; Ferguson will no doubt approve of that, although something tells you that even the likes of Nani and Bacary Sagna will feel this rivalry in their bones when they step out on the pitch today.
To describe each other – or each other’s teams – as “enemies” was, Wenger said, “too big a word”. “The managers have a responsibility to make this a football game first,” he said. On Ferguson he was about as generous as he has ever been in recent memory. “He has most of the qualities you need to be a great manager,” Wenger said. “He is passionate, he makes the right decisions, he has personality and consistency in his motivation. You must sacrifice your life to be in a job like his such a long time. You get up in the morning and drive to the training ground and you’re at work but this job never leaves your head wherever you are. We are the same as far as the sacrifice is concerned.”
In return Ferguson talked about the agonising he believed that Wenger must have gone through in releasing Henry in the summer. The United manager always seemed to have an antipathy for the French striker, perhaps the kind only reserved for the players he really wished he had in his own team. But when he talked about the process of letting a star name go, it was borne of experience with those such as Paul Ince, Mark Hughes, David Beckham, Keane and Van Nistelrooy. “I think Arsène did the right thing in letting Henry go,” he said. “He had served his time and it was time for him to move on. Henry was probably the most important person in that Arsenal team over the last few years but there’s always a time you have to change and managing change is very difficult. I felt that Arsène would sell Henry last season.
“The problem for Arsène Wenger and Alex Ferguson is the length of time they’ve been at their clubs: 11 years for Arsène and I’ll be 21 years next week. You are very emotional, you get attached to players but there’s a decision that has to be made about how effective they are in a team and unfortunately for a player-manager relationship I’ve got to put my Manchester United hat on. I’m paid by them to make these decisions and sometimes they are hard decisions.”
Those are the similarities, what then of the differences? Wenger’s team took significantly less to assemble than Ferguson’s – key players like Cesc Fabregas, Kolo Touré and Gaël Clichy were picked up for very little money. However, United are champions and they have a strong British element to them for those who consider that important. Arsenal’s lone Englishman, Theo Walcott, is unlikely even to get a place on the bench today. United are without Paul Scholes but Owen Hargreaves and Michael Carrick, along with French striker Louis Saha, are fit again.
Thirty-three meetings between the teams of these two men, 22 of them in the Premier League – and of those games, eight wins each and the rest drawn. Come next February, United will be marking the 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster with a tribute to the Busby Babes – the prototype for the great principle of developing young footballers within a club. Their last game on English soil in 1958 was a victory at Highbury in a 5-4 classic. Fifty years on, the great home-grown team is Arsenal more than United, and with players sourced from all over the world. “That’s where the common ground is [with Ferguson],” Wenger said. “He’s not scared to take a chance with young players and bring them through, and nor am I.”
The Third Coming: Wenger and Ferguson’s rebuilding projects
* Wenger’s Arsenal
* 1997 - 1998 Double winners(4-4-2, all-time club appearances in brackets): Seaman (563); Dixon (618), Keown (449), Adams (capt, 668), Winterburn (584); Parlour (467), Petit (118), Vieira (407), Overmars (142); Anelka (89), Bergkamp (423, pictured). Substitutes: Bould (372), Platt (108), Wright (288).
* 2003 - 2004 INVINCIBLES
(4-4-2): Lehmann (189); Lauren (152), Campbell (197), Touré (259), Cole (228); Ljungberg (328), Vieira (capt, 407), Gilberto (168), Pires (283); Bergkamp (423), Henry (370).
Substitutes: Keown (449), Kanu (199), Wiltord (175).
* 2007 - 2008
(4-4-2): Almunia (55); Sagna (13), Touré (259), Gallas (capt, 35), Clichy (112); Rosicky (47), Flamini (127), Fabregas (168), Hleb (101); Van Persie (121), Adebayor (69). Substitutes: Eboué (80), Gilberto (218), Walcott (42).
* Ferguson’s Manchester United
* 1993 - 1994 DOUBLE WINNERS
(4-4-2): Schmeichel (398); Parker (137), Bruce (capt, 411), Pallister (433), Irwin (511); Kanchelskis (132), Keane (458), Ince (276), Giggs (648); Hughes (453), Cantona (184, pictured).
Substitutes: Sharpe (213), Robson (437), McClair (398).
* 1998 - 1999 TREBLE WINNERS
(4-4-2): Schmeichel (398); G Neville (514), Stam (125), Johnsen (131), Irwin (511); Beckham (356), Keane (capt, 458), Scholes (456), Giggs (648); Yorke (120), Cole (231). Substitutes: Butt (307), Sheringham (101), Solskjaer (216).
* 2007 - 2008
(4-4-2): Van der Sar (111); G Neville (capt, 514), Ferdinand (227), Vidic (63), Evra (50); Ronaldo (161), Hargreaves (4), Scholes (456), Giggs (648); Rooney (142), Tevez (11). Substitutes: Carrick (58), Nani (9), Saha (67).
…
Times: Not much stirs on planet football without capturing the notice of Sir Alex Ferguson, particularly when it comes to spotting the latest emerging talents. An extensive network of scouts ensure that the Manchester United manager is kept abreast of the young players who promise to dominate the sport long after he has left Old Trafford, but, as he looks at Cesc Fàbregas orchestrating the Arsenal midfield this lunchtime, he will acknowledge that this was one gem that not so much slipped through the net but evaded it completely.
“No, I wasn’t aware of him when he was at Barcelona,” Ferguson said at United’s training ground yesterday. “Maybe my scouts were, but I wasn’t. Arsenal moved very quickly there.”
Indeed, having caught the eye of Arsenal scouts while playing for Barcelona’s youth team, Fàbregas was on his way to London shortly after his 16th birthday, with the Catalan club receiving only a six-figure sum as compensation. It was the same summer that Ferguson began his rebuilding programme at Old Trafford by signing players such as Eric Djemba Djemba, Kléberson and David Bellion, although he also, rather more memorably, bought an 18-year-old winger from Sporting Lisbon. Three years on, Cristiano Ronaldo is undoubtedly a world-class performer, but, in contrast to Fàbregas, he cost United a fee of £12.24 million.
Investing in youth is a precarious business and, while Ferguson is entitled to feel that Ronaldo, Anderson, Nani, Wayne Rooney and Carlos Tévez are at the very least the equal of Fàbregas et al, there is a significant difference. Those five players cost United a projected total of £86 million – and they do not even “own” Tévez – whereas Arsenal picked up Kolo Touré for £350,000, Gaël Clichy for £250,000, Emmanuel Eboué and Mathieu Flamini for £1.5 million apiece, Robin van Persie for £3 million, Emmanuel Adebayor for £4 million and, best of all, Fàbregas for a meagre compensation payment.
Ferguson talked yesterday of having identified Nani as a potential signing at the age of 16, at the same he time bought Ronaldo. “A judgment is made over a period,” he said. “It’s not a quick decision. When you are spending big money on a teenager, you’ve got to be sure of certain things.”
Arsenal, though, move more decisively and with more certainty than the rest. Some of their teenagers, such as Denilson and Theo Walcott, have still to prove their worth – and they, coincidentally, are the two who cost most – but both are equipped to go a long way in the game, as are Alexandre Song, Abou Diaby and Nicklas Bendtner, among others. For such a small outlay, it is an astonishing haul, one for which Wenger can thank his extensive scouting network, particularly in France and in the Ivory Coast.
Ferguson has tried to go down the Wenger route – signing the best young players at 16 or 17, rather than a couple of years later, by which time valuations have soared – but with indifferent results. Gerard Piqué, a teammate of Fàbregas at Barcelona, is on the fringes of the United squad, but Giuseppe Rossi was sold to Villarreal (albeit at a large profit), while Floribert Nagilula, Mads Timm and Markus Neumayr, all of whom joined with high expectations, left on free transfers and the less said about Dong Fangzhou the better. United’s best prospects remain those, such as Jonny Evans and Darron Gibson, who are native to these islands, if not necessarily to Manchester.
That is a key difference between the clubs, but a willingness to blood young talent is one trait that unites Ferguson and Wenger. “That’s where the common ground is,” Wenger said yesterday. “He’s not scared to take a chance with young players and bring them through and nor am I. But what he did [in the 1990s] to bring those young English players through he cannot do any more,” Wenger said. “Now he has bought Nani, Ronaldo, Anderson, the kind of talents that aren’t available as much in England.” Still, there is one more similarity that links United teams past and present and the present Arsenal side, all of them having involved a purge of senior players to accommodate the youngsters. Ferguson dumped Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andriy Kanchelskis in 1995 and Roy Keane and Ruud van Nistelrooy before last season’s title-winning campaign, while Wenger has dismantled the “Invincibles” team of 2003-04, most notably by offloading Thierry Henry to Barcelona.
“I think Arsène did the correct thing in letting Henry go because it was time to move on,” Ferguson said yesterday. “There’s always a time when you have to change. Managing changes is very difficult. You have to make some crucial decisions.”
There is none more crucial than those surrounding the break-up of one team and the emergence of another. Ferguson and Wenger are masters of that, even if both have gone about it in very different ways.
Value for money?
£37.1m Cost of the Arsenal team that Arsène Wenger will send out to play Manchester United today
£30m Price of Rio Ferdinand, the most expensive player in today’s game
£151.8m Money spent by Sir Alex Ferguson on assembling the United side that takes to the pitch at the Emirates
