WENGER: English game losing soul

Arsene Wenger has admitted serious fears for the future of English football.

The Arsenal manager believes the domestic game in England is in danger of being severely damaged by mass media coverage and new club ownership.

Arsenal are themselves reported to be the takeover target of Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov and Wenger insists the increasingly business orientated ownership of English clubs is another damaging factor.

"English football is losing his soul," Wenger told The Sun. "Fans are the keeper of our football.

"But the first signs of danger are there to see. Stadiums are starting to empty, TV channels and radio stations are overcrowded with football.

"There is a kind of overdose looming.

"Suddenly the English model has gone from owner-supporters to owner-businessman.

"The danger wasn't there yesterday but it's there today. Of course you can have business integrated into the sport while still respecting the values of football.

"However perhaps it is time for people to worry."

(Courtesy: www.football365.com)

Frankly speaking, i think Wenger has a point, but its not as though these clubs had a choice in going down the foreign business ownership road. No no my readers. There is ONE person to blame for this, and he is that very expressionless Russion billionaire up at Chelsea.

As soon as he came into EPL, everything changed. Suddenly the prices of players became inflated. Wages inflated. Chelsea could buy anyone and everyone, and were above everything as they tapped up the best talent on the planet. Abrahimovich's coming was like an asteroid hitting the planet. Everything's went crazy and now that the dust has settled, clubs have realised they need to get money from somewhere to compete.

Why Wenger fears his dark side

In an exclusive extract from the Arsenal Opus, an 850-page history of one of England’s proudest clubs, Arsène Wenger talks about his ongoing battle against a lifelong fiery temper

Arsène Wenger exudes intelligence and a sense of calm. Dignified and unruffled, he is used to living with pressure, but he admits it has taken years of self-discipline to keep his fiery temper in check. Even now he says he fears the dark side of his nature and the consequences of losing his cool.

“Is it anger, is it aggression, or is it a desire to be successful? Would I compromise my princi-ples? On occasions, yes, as first and foremost, I am a winner. But long-term, that’s not my attitude,” he explains. “Where does the anger come from? My father and my mother were both quite excitable, but the postwar world in which they lived was quite a rough world. The football world is also quite rough. You have to assert your personality and you need a high level of motivation. I control it now by thinking about the consequences of what I do. I didn’t always have the ‘off’ switch. I have seen very talented players and managers lose themselves to anger. A lot of things disturb me, but it is not a fear to lose. It is for you to master this fear. I was always concerned about dominating my animal feeling – not really dominating, I mean, knowing myself better.

“You can sometimes be surprised by your bad side. I have a dark side. You want to win so much that sometimes you forget that it is as well that you respect the rules. When you don’t win, you have to acknowledge the respect of your opponents as well. Sometimes I can’t do that. It is a dark side because the perfect side would be to say, ‘Well done. You played better’. You never know, in 50 years I might achieve it.”

There have been times when his impassioned response to on-field events led to criticism and, occasionally, disciplinary procedures. In October 2000 he was fined £100,000 and given a 12-match touchline ban, subsequently greatly reduced on appeal, for a disagreement with officials. “I feel like I have killed somebody,” he said at the time of the harshness of the punishment. In the final throes of Highbury’s last season, when Spurs were the visitors, Wenger argued vehemently with his Tottenham counterpart, Martin Jol. In Monaco he flew into rare but serious rages. At Cannes he once had to stop the team bus to be physically sick after a 3-0 defeat. His sojourn in Japan tempered his anger, but he could still finish matches at Highbury with his tie tugged to half-mast in frustration...

(Click here to read on)

Arsene's Arse-anal statistics

	P	W	D	L	F	A
Total*	621	361	145	115	1115	563
Percentage	100	58.13	23.35	18.52	1.8	0.91

The table above makes tough reading, but simply put, in Arsene's 621 games with Arsenal, he has won 361 games, drawn 145 and lost 115. All in all his Arsenal side have scored 1115 goals while conceding 563. It gets even more interesting when we convert these stats to percentages, as you can see.

"Arsene who?" was the headlines when he arrived in '96 (Courtest: arsenal.com)

Overall, he has won approximately 60% of his games whils only lost 20%. The average goal per game ratio is 1.8 while average goal conceded per game is 0.91. My first reaction to this was, " only 1.8 goals a game?". Its like saying on average, Arsenal wins their games 2-1.

Click here to view every other stats of Arsene Wenger's Arsenal career.

P.S apologies to all Arse fans out there for the subjectline, i just couldn't help it. I'm sure you've heard worse than that before anyway :)