Arsene Wenger has paid tribute to old adversary Sir Alex Ferguson after the Scot announced he’d be stepping down as Manchester United manager at the end of the season.
It goes without saying that the pair have not always seen eye-to-eye since Arsene’s arrival in 1996 but with 26-years under his belt and his side’s name engraved on pretty much every trophy going the Frenchman admits that his peer has enjoyed an exceptional career.
“I would just like to pay tribute to an unbelievable achievement and a fantastic career,” Wenger told Arsenal Player magnanimously.
“Basically the achievement is immaculate, when you look at the whole structure and consistency of the achievement. It is, of course, something exceptional.
“It is difficult to imagine English football without him, but it’s now a reality and a fact. Of course the next manager has to fill in and show he has the dimension to do that. It is a big task for the guy who comes in.”
Naturally, this being Arseblog News you won’t find us penning a glowing reference for Old Trafford’s whiskey-soaked-masticator-extraordinaire. His career was pretty good, but he’s still a horrible old git and we’re happy to see the back of him.
Instead we’ll revel in the humorous exchanges he and Arsene enjoyed when it looked as though they’d happily rip each other’s heads off.
Ah the nostalgia…
“Intelligence! They say he’s an intelligent man, right? Speaks five languages. I’ve got a 15-year-old boy from the Ivory Coast who speaks five languages.”
Ferguson refused to buy into Arsene as Le Professeur from the moment he arrived in 1996.
“He’s a novice and should keep his opinions to Japanese football.”
The Scot continued his diatribe into the following year as Arsene ruffled his feathers.
“Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home.”
Wenger responds to Ferguson’s 2002 claim that United had been the best side in the Premier League after Christmas despite Arsenal being crowned champions.
“What would I do if Alex wasn’t around? I would have no one to keep me on my toes or to fight. Of course I am pleased that he changed his mind [about retirement]. I enjoy our rivalry. It is good for Arsenal, good for Manchester United and good for both of us.”
Arsene reflects on Ferguson’s decision to renege on his retirement in February 2002.
“He never comes for a drink with the opposing manager after matches. He’s the only manager in the Premiership not to do so. It is a tradition here. It would be good for him to accept the tradition.”
Ferguson moans about Wenger’s decision to always turn down his post-match advances in 2002.
“Maybe next time I see him, I’ll buy him a bottle of whisky.”
Wenger retorts with Arsenal winning the Double.
“Are Manchester United worthy winners? I don’t know.”
A frustrated Arsene reflects on United pipping Arsenal to the title in 2002/03.
“He looks like a nice boy but on the pitch he does not always behave fairly.”
Arsene sticks the dagger into Ferguson’s favourite horse-faced striker, Ruud van Nistelrooy after Keown’s famous taunting of the Dutchman.
“We all know him, he can only cheat people.”
Wenger again targets Van Nistelrooy, this time after the Dutchman helps end Arsenal’s 49-game unbeaten run.
“I have no diplomatic relations with him. What I don’t understand is that he does what he wants and you (the press) are all at his feet.”
Wenger’s anger in the aftermath of the infamous Pizzagate spat was enduring.
“In the tunnel Wenger was criticising my players, calling them cheats, so I told him to leave them alone and behave himself. He ran at me with hands raised saying ‘what do you want to do about it?’
“To not apologise for the behaviour of the players to another manager is unthinkable. It’s a disgrace, but I don’t expect Wenger to ever apologise, he’s that type of person.
“Wenger is always complaining the match was not played in the right spirit. They [Arsenal] are the worst losers of all time, they don’t know how to lose.”
Having been hit in the face with a slice of American Hot, Ferguson’s anger with Arsene and Arsenal reached new levels despite his side’s victory.
“Ferguson’s out of order. He has lost all sense of reality. He is going out looking for a confrontation, then asking the person he is confronting to apologise. He’s pushed the cork in a bit far this time”
The anger continued into January 2005 with Arsene again biting back.
“Ferguson should calm down. Maybe it would have been better if he had put us against a wall and shot us.”
And went on and on and on…
“I’m ready to take the blame for all the problems of English football if that is what he wants.”
Wenger responds after Ferguson’s 2007 jibe questioning Arsenal’s lack of homegrown players.
“It’s just the two of us. We’ll probably ride out in the sunset together.”
By 2009, with Arsenal not proving as much of a threat, Fergie softened his approach to Wenger.
“If you look at Brian Clough, myself and Arsene, it proves longevity brings rewards. His team play the right way and he has a stadium that is full every week. He has been an incredible manager for that football club. There is no question about that”
The Scot continued to woo Arsene in October 2009.
“I don’t know [why the relationship is better] but we are survivors, so there is respect there. When you are a long time in this job you know everybody has to go through different times. There is respect there, yes. I’m sorry you were disappointed [that we don’t argue anymore]!”
Wenger also admitted in 2009 that the relationship between him and Ferguson had changed.
“He has to be immortal so the club doesn’t suffer! His commitment is always there, you never feel that his commitment is weakened.”
Wenger touched on the prospect of United after Ferguson in late 2012.
Arseblog. I do love you a lot. This was brilliant.
Credit to the Arseblog News Hound for this one.
Even if we win the Premiership next year, it won’t feel as sweet now.
Yes it fucking will
Obviously it will, but to have won it beating the Ferguson managed United would have been so orgasmic!
It will be because we will get to see the Dutch Skank cry!
Well Arsene has beaten Ferguson to the league trophy thrice so everything else considered, I think that’s a decent return. We also ran them close plenty of times before the rise of Chelsea .
@ Mos – absolutely, and had we won while Ferguson was still manager, it would have revived the good old rivalry! Hence it would have been sweeter!
He’ll be a director. He’ll be in the crowd on the last day, sitting next to Bobby Charlton, listening to the scores come in as we win again, crying into his wine as his team go down to another 2-0 loss. We’ll love it. He’ll hate it. I’ll feel vaguely sorry for one of the two of them for about a second, but then I’ll remember that RVP is still on their bench since his bad patch in October and my joy will return thrice-fold.
The cunt won’t go away.
David Moyes is going to do well at first, because he is going to take it game by game but around christmas he will run out of gas, things will start to go wrong for Manutd and David won’t have a clue why they are going wrong b/c he hasn’t managed a club this big.
Manutd shares will drop by 30% prompting the board to sack moyes and Ferguson to make a shock come back,
Not as a long term manager but an “Interim” one till the end of the season.
Potentially the most ridiculous comment I’ve ever seen on this site.
Steady on.
Yep, silly bugger will be forgiving Anelka soon.
We will not win the premier league next season. Baby steps perhaps a carling semi final exit at the hands of petersbrough then a f.a cup winners medal after a jovetic brace against chavs. 2-1
We’ll come in at no.2 in the epl.
I’ll take it!
The most ridiculous comment ever seen on this site didn’t hold it’s record for long, did it?
One of us has already conceded next year’s title race.
If you go into it planning to take baby steps you will never take the strides needed to win.
I think his point was a valid one. We don’t have the horses to win the race and with this club’s track record in the transfer market it doesn’t appear that will be changing any time soon.
Are you insane you dip shit
Thank you for the second. I wish I can turn back the hand of clock
I wish I could turn back the Hand of God. We might have won a World Cup.
“Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home”
Brilliant.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/1975624.stm
well worth a re-visit
What happened to that Arsene?!?!
He decided it was better to collect his 7 million a year and declare fourth place a trophy.
He built a 500m euro stadium
Emirates is not yet a “euro” stadium. It cannot hold a champ league final which dictates a seating capacity pf atleast 65,000.
cant believe it’s phil mcnulty writing that. Prick
But not everybody mistakes his for a sack of potatoes when he comes home like fergie does!
‘ Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home ‘
Wenger wins.
I finally submit a comment and a guy gets in with the same comment seconds before me. Damn.
I hope its “Fergie-Time” and not “Manchester United-Time”.
Though you sort of feel for the next few years, until he leaves United for good, Moyes will be a puppet and Fergie will continue to throw his weight around.
I wonder if Moyes’ nose will redden over time and perhaps he will become a horrible bullying cunt. Though at least Wenger seemed to get the upper hand over Moyes more often than not. We might even get a win at OT next season!
O crap, it’s already begun! Look at that nose..
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/manchester-united-confirm-david-moyes-1878283
“It must have got lost in the post.”
Arsene, reacting to Fergie’s claim that he had sent Arsenal a congratulatory letter after the 2002 double (I think).
In all this, if there’s anything i am grateful for, it has to be the fact that this pizzagate incidence happened
The Moriarty to our Sherlock has finally gone.
No, he’s got smarter. He’ll be working his evil from a Director’s Seat (The “Of Football” is silent in this case). In the background but still in control.
You’ve got to respect the man, even if only for getting away with blatant cheating & league manipulation for twenty odd years.
The sad part is that at the end of the season, unless he gets sacked, Tony Pulis becomes the second longest serving manager in the English leagues.
Not a little help from fellow JamU lovers Howard Webb, Mike Dean, Chris Foy, and Phil Dowd.
Respect my hole.
Wowzers! Never knew this much was ever said. We’ll definitely miss those days. That being said Fergie came 10 years before Le Prof arrived so in all fairness Arsene has to stay another 5 at least!
Nobody says wowzers anymore.
errr, he just did, didnt he
🙂
Then he’s a nobody
Wowsers! Nobody spoke. Why are we all commenting?
Really makes me worry about life after Wenger. For all the grief he’s got lately (and over the last 8 years really) he has such a fantastic mind and ability to run a club as a whole.
Now we just need Birthday Boy Bergkamp to ply his trade for a few more seasons and then get him in when that time eventually comes around.
Arsenes already lined up his successor/ protoge Dragan Stojkovic. Would love to have God back as a youth coach though!
Stojkovic was an amazing dribbler of the ball. I wonder who will take over…
Bergkamp needs to get over his fear of flying if he’s to be manager. But boy do I want that to happen.
And by the way that was lovely from Arseblog and his pack of hounds. 🙂
I would like to respond to an earlier comment that it would be better if we beat Ferguson to the title again. In my opinion, who gives a crap. He is going to be in the head office now breathing down Moyes neck…so when we finally get back there, and we will…the only difference it will make is that he will drown his sorrows in Whiskey and children’s souls from the owner’s box instead of the sideline.
With the constant wantaway rooney rumours fergie didn’t want to stick around to find out who next will be carrying him to and fro the oldtrafford toilets. He had to retire. Good ol’ rednose.
“Maybe i should have sold him Gallas”.
Arsène silently reflects on the fact that every manager that buys his former captains doesn’t last two seasons.
Capello (PV4)
Reijkard (TH14)
Some twat, i think. (Gallas)
Pep (Cesc)
Red nose (Judas)
Arsene Wenger ones quotes this
For me, when you change more than three players in a team, you always take a technical risk because you change the deep structure of the team and the deep balance of the team, mentally and technically.
http://www.football365.co.uk/f365-features/5643990/Our-Favourite-60-Arsene-Wenger-Quotes
This sums it up for me. “We try to go a different way that, for me, is respectable. Briefly, these are the basics. I thought: “We are building a stadium, so I will get young players in early so I do not find myself exposed on the transfer market without the money to compete with the others. I build a team, and we compensate by creating a style of play, by creating a culture at the club because the boy comes in at 16 or 17 and when they go out they have a supplement of soul, of love for… Read more »
How close was he to emulating that? If it wasn’t for other clubs throwing money at our players, we could have had a world-class team. Still, life goes on.
Quite close, I think. If we’d won the title in 2007-8 like we should have, then I think we’d have taken a different path. Shame.
Increasingly worry that that season was the turning point of the Wenger-era at Arsenal. When you look back, we were up against a United team that was streets ahead of the lot that won the title this season, yet we almost did it. If we’d won the title that season, we might have kept the team together and really built something special. Instead, it’s all been a bit rubbish since then.
Now we see why Man City were buying so many of our players. They were trying to reap the benefits of Wenger’s system.
He had this plan before the PL caught Billionaire Bastard Syndrome didn’t he? He couldn’t have foreseen the obscene amounts of money players would be tempted to abandon their close mates with.
So close.. That birmingham game was a key moment i felt the world had turned against Arsenal at that moment, victory was slipping from our grasp, Eduardos injury, the dropped points and Gallas ranting to the media and lossing captaincy. End of the season Flamini and Hleb left for the money and then the cracks were starting to show, finacially we couldnt compete and each season we have got weaker. But next season i think things will be different we are in a healthy finacial posistion now so i guess the youth policy didnt completely go to waste we are… Read more »
Ferguson will never hold a candle to Wenger’s charm, elegance and philosophical genius.
I think it levels the playing field a bit..however, AF was helped a lot by his club nearly £50M every year when he demanded. They never had hold back any of the pennies even when they were under massive debt (and they still are)…that’s a sharp contrast to AW who had to be very prudent in early years of new stadium. Its not a coincidence that our position in league had dwindled as the same time as the new stadium had to be paid off. If you see the clubs who have won the league since we last won –… Read more »
He still had to watch as we won the title on their ground, beating his team in the process. Good Times!!
Wenger and Fergie aint good friends but when it comes to managing a team, both managers have proven they have made great inputs in the English League
A scouse mate was revelling in AF departure because he believed that it improved their chances of winning the league (ha ha – along with everyone elses he meant). He said to me: “you must be pleased?”. I explained why I’m not. Unlike mugsmashers, we don’t feel a sense of entitlement to the league trophy. We know we have to compete for it. And the times we won it, we beat some amazing teams especially including Fergies. We literally wrestled it off them. When LFC last won it, it was by default; everyone else was shit. When took it off… Read more »
Well said. Although more of an early to mid season thing, complacency may cost us 10 pts a season. Never expecting to win will make us title challengers next season.
City are constricted by the amount of players they have and if the special one comes back he will build a new team and I believe utd will become the new Liverpool so who is the team always in the mix and to the most part consistent but next season without financial constraints… The one the only ARSENAL
The future is bright the future is red and white
Come on ARSENAL it’s ours for the future 🙂 🙂 🙂
I agree with Safety whole heartedly. I also think though AFC supporters need to remember it will possibly still take 2 season for us to actually win something again. AW is not the like the managers of city and Chelsea as in he wont bring in whole sale squad changes even with cash available he will probably bring in 3 players max 4 and then add further to that the following summer. We still have the players to release like vela denilson and bendtner before we even think of the few at home like chamak. Its great to see the… Read more »
I’d much rather have had a clip of Arsene laughing and singing “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” over and over.
completely off topic – watching an Arsenal FA cup highlights show on Fox Soccer in the states. A couple comments
1) the ’91 – ’93 away kits may have been the ugliest things ever created
2) Wiltord & Gallas look way too similar. I blame Gallas.
3) Half of the goals come from midfield or wingers running off of the striker. Why don’t we do this anymore?
Mmmm… half time and Chelsea are down to 10 men and Villa are one up! Come on Villa, finish the fuckers off! 3 more please to swing the goal difference nicely.
…stupid Villa
Terry’s dive only intensifies my hate for him even more.
Hope Hazard is buggered for the rest of the season so maybe Everton can beat them on the final day.
Sadly the cunts have equalised.On a more positive note though,Johnny Racist has knackered his ankle quite nicely…
Lamppost has scored to put them up…
Lampard you cunt
ohh fucking chavs
it looks like 3rd place is going to them the cunts
Maybe. They are playing, by and large, pretty poor football. They could lose to Everton at the end of the season and if we win both of the remaining games we would be third. If they draw Everton, we need to have a superior goal diffence to finish above them (they have 4 more than us at the moment).
Fuck off Lampard you fat cunt.
Fuck me, talk about optimistic, let’s just be happy beating the spud cunts into fourth !
Extra time would be nice so Wigan run the bollox of themselves
I hope this ensures we’re switched on and focussed for our game against wigan. If we arent up for it we wont be winning. We need to brin them back down to earth.
Delighted for Dave Whelan, now bring them on the piss for a few days
Congratulations Wigan, I loved seeing the band of mercenaries picking up their losers’ medals.
Looks like we’ll have to show City how it is done next Tuesday.
The look on Nasri’s face as Wigan went up to collect their medals was priceless. The only negative about the game was that it didn’t go into extra time. And I don’t believe that bollocks about celebrating with Irn Brew – that lost will be getting pissed tonight at somebody’s house.
Today was a massive wake-up call for us: if we take Wigan lightly, like City did, then we will lose. But I fancy us to beat them 3-1. Let’s just hope that Stoke do us a favour tomorrow. We can finish this on Tuesday.
Lets hope the lads don’t approach the wigan game with the handbrake on after seeing what they can do. Attack, attack, attack we need the 3 points as well as the goals! Come on.
Arseblog? Superb! Nice one, really nice to put this together. I appreciate your work. Kudos!!!
Alrite fellas. The situation with Wigan is something like this:
Its like, if my last victory in a game of chess means that I’ve secured the charming services of Scarlett Johansson in my bed for a whole year, and if I don’t win my next match in midweek, it just means I will fuck no-one ELSE during that year.
You would’nt want to challenge me 😉
Let’s hope Wigan is gay.
Yes. But only for Cazorla! Which is why I don’t at all like this news of Pellegrini taking over at Man City (no pun intended).
If you meant that we should hope Wigan is gay because then he wouldn’t care less of that pretty actress, then that makes for a good reply indeed:)
I don’t want to ruin your fantasy but Scarlet Johansson is a lesbian.
No she isn’t.
Yes she is. I know this because rich people don’t go to Democratic conventions unless they are gay.
Oh, she is in a relationship with a girl? I think she is still too feminine to be a lesbian, a bisexual perhaps, but not a lesbian. The dream carries on!
She is not currently dating a woman wtf? Why are we even discussing this?
You do realise there are lesbians that are immensely feminine and lesbians that are pretty butch? Feminimity doesn’t really mean anything when it comes to sexual orientation…
Gay smay. Pudamadre will make her a redblooded heterosexual with his otherwordly love making.
Guardiola might be a full blown cunt. Now he wants wilshere.
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Never thought I’d say this but come on the stoke you knuckle dragging cunts
Hope the Orcs ruin the Spuds.
They seem to be having some sort of an anniversary (it’s probably some rugby club tradition to give out free shirts).
They’re doing alright at the moment!
It is even sweeter that it came from a set piece!
Oh lord, you stupid Orcs.
Fucking Orcs!! Break some legs, score some goals you fucking neanderthal cunts
Fuck man people troll and drag shit off topic which lest I remind you is how our manager has a silver tongue and how he stuck it up Whisky Man’s bumbum.
Charlie Adam is a fucking idiot.
What a pillock. Fucking hell. Hopefully this will be one of those games where losing a man makes a team play better.
To be fair, his first yellow was a bit risible, even if it led the Goblin Prince to jump around like an idiot in hilarious fashion.