ARSENE WENGER thought he would be lucky to survive three years at Arsenal — and ended up staying for 22.
Tomorrow he takes charge of his final match as manager of the North London club that has dominated his every waking minute since 1996.
His legacy is there for all to see, from the ten major trophies won — including the unbeaten Invincibles season in 2004-05 — to the magnificent Emirates Stadium and luxurious London Colney training complex.
Yet even today, 12 years on from the short move across the borough of Islington, boss Wenger still feels that the club lost part of its soul when it relocated from Highbury to its 60,000-capacity stadium at Ashburton Grove.
Wenger, 68, does not usually do nostalgia yet becomes twinkly-eyed when forced to reminisce about those glorious early years at Arsenal.
The game’s greatest philosopher admitted: “Highbury was a cathedral, a football church.
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“You could smell the soul of every guy that played there so it will always be a special place for me.
“Moving to the Emirates was like buying a new house and it took us a while to feel at home there.
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“It’s a fantastic stadium but there was something special at Highbury that you could never recreate when you build something new.”
With the benefit of hindsight, Wenger concedes that it was a move from their spiritual home which Arsenal had to make, even if he had plenty of misgivings at the time.
He revealed: “We had to do it because there is no club that can turn down people who want to attend the games.
“At the time I thought we were a bit too ambitious with 60,000 but at the end of the day it worked out.
“For a long time we couldn’t find a suitable site for the new ground.
“Moving to Wembley was a possibility at the time and at one stage we wanted to come out to London Colney on the M25.
“But people already had their habits in the area and we finally found a site near Highbury which was ideal.”
Yet one unforeseen casualty of the move was Wenger’s working relationship with his close friend David Dein, the former Arsenal vice-chairman who was responsible for recruiting him from Japanese club Nagoya Grampus Eight all those years ago.
Less than a year after relocating to the Emirates, Dein had been forced out in a boardroom coup over his support for bringing in new investment from Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov.
Wenger admitted: “Ideally I would have loved to continue working with David Dein.
“I think his leaving was down to the fact that the football world had changed and we had built the stadium.
“During that period of construction, one of the requests from the banks lending us the money was that I stayed as manager.
“So I signed on for five years accepting that I would have more limited resources to work with. And when you have that, you have less good players.
“I could have left. I had many offers but I turned everybody down, all the big clubs. So nobody can question my loyalty to this club.
“I didn’t want to walk out in the middle of the challenge and that is an important part of my life that I am very proud of.
“When I look back now, I separate my Arsenal career into two parts — the first ten years before the move and then the rest.
“I personally feel that I did my best work between 2006 and 2015 because that was the period when I needed to be at my strongest.
“It was not the most glamorous time, maybe, but it was the most difficult because I was working with restricted resources but had to keep the club in a position where we could pay our debts.
“We faced a double handicap at that time because we had to pay back the debt and face new competition from clubs such as Chelsea and Manchester City who were able to use even more outside resources then they usually had.”
Yet as he prepares for the final leg of his long goodbye tour at Huddersfield tomorrow, Wenger insists he has nothing but happy memories of his time in English football.
He confessed: “When I arrived at Arsenal, I thought if all goes well I would make three years. And it did go well.
“Now England is my home. I have lived here for 22 years, my daughter has spent her whole life here and is going to university here. This is where I feel at home.
“But even now, I honestly don’t know how to get to the centre of London.
“I know it’s not far but you’d have to teach me where it is because in 22 years I’ve never been there unless I’ve had a driver.
“My way was Totteridge to London Colney and back. And that’s it.”
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