Arsenal

Insideworldfootball

A revolution devours its own as history teaches us. Arsene Wenger, known as the Professor, should know that. But he seems to be oblivious to the fact that having been the greatest agent of change in English football he cannot stand still and needs to evolve if he is to move forward and not fall victim to his own revolution.

That Wenger has been the greatest revolutionary in British football cannot be doubted. This is all the more remarkable because English football, before Wenger, was intensely insular. So insular indeed that when the directors of Manchester United considered appointing Alex Ferguson as their manager their main worry was that no manager brought up in Scottish football had succeeded in England. Matt Busby and Bill Shankly were Scots but they had had a through grounding in English football. In contrast Jock Stein, perhaps one of the greatest managers these isles have produced and Ferguson’s mentor, failed to make it in England.

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Evening Standard

Managers the length and breadth of the country insist they are only thinking about the next game but Gus Poyet’s mind is already on challenging and, possibly, managing Brighton’s FA Cup fourth-round opponents, Arsenal.

The Uruguayan has the small matter of a 600-mile round trip to Blackburn in atrocious conditions for tonight’s Championship clash while Arsenal entertain West Ham in the Premier League tomorrow night.

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Insideworldfootball.com

Those who forget the past, said the great American savant George Santayana, are condemned to repeat it. Football in 2013 runs the same risk. This is because many of the administrators who run the game seem to have forgotten the past. Or perhaps they never cared for the past despite their many references to it in public utterances.

This explains why 2013 will be for the world’s favourite game a question of dealing with issues many thought had long been settled.

Take race.

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Evening Standard

Gunning for glory: Peter Hill-Wood, the Arsenal chairman. Image courtesy of Evening Standard

Arsenal’s victory at Liverpool may go some way to reassuring restive fans that this campaign will not be a repeat of last season. Then, after suffering their worst start in nearly 60 years, Arsenal just edged Tottenham in the race for the Champions League, largely due to the collapse of their bitter north London rivals.

But, even before Sunday’s success, Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood had no doubt that wider horizons beckon this season. We met at his home in Sandwich as the Old Etonian prepared for his annual holiday to Long Island in New York and the 76-year-old could not have been more confident.

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When it comes to averting a crisis, the Frenchman need only look at his great rival

PlayUp

Arsenal’s match with Tottenham may have been a prelude to the Oscars, but it could have more far reaching consequences than any movie. History does not always repeat itself, not in exact details, but Arsenal’s demolition of Tottenham did take me back to the 2001-2002 season. I believe it has lessons for us.

Then, everyone was convinced Manchester United’s great run under Sir Alex Ferguson had come to an end. For a start, he had said he was going at the end of the season. The season had barely got underway when, on 28 August, Sir Alex Ferguson sold Jaap Stam to Lazio for £15.3m. It came a week after Stam’s book Head to Head was sensationally serialised in the Daily Mirror. He described how Ferguson had tapped him up when he was at PSV and also advised players to dive for penalties.

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