My Life in Red and White: The Sunday Times Number One Bestselling Autobiography

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It will illuminate the mystique surrounding one of the most revered and respected managers, revealing the wisdom and vision that made him an icon in the world's most popular sport. In the years following they would holiday on Dein’s boat, and the Arsenal board member would watch Monaco’s matches in France. They had won three league titles, three FA Cup’s, and had put together The Invincibles season and the 49-game unbeaten run.

A must-read not only for Arsenal supporters but football fans everywhere, MY LIFE IN RED AND WHITE illuminates the mystique surrounding one of the most respected managers in the world's most popular sport. My Life In Red and White feels like a wasted opportunity, a weak penalty aimed straight down the middle.Although it was silly to think that Wenger would be indiscreet, I had hoped to get some insight into some of the more controversial transfers of the post-Invincible era (think Gilberto, van Persie, Fabregas) but the only hint I spotted was the remark about Cole in chapter 7 that I mention above. Finally, my biggest surprise was that, apparently, Tom Cruise made a single appearance for the Arse under Wenger. I hadn’t realised how much of a family man Arsene Wenger is – there’s a couple of pages of quite moving tribute to his daughter Lea in the middle of chapter 6. No score-settling, and very little explanation of some of the more puzzling moments in his career are on offer. Meanwhile Mourinho, who cast a long shadow over some of Wenger’s most difficult years, appears once in the book, in a table provided at the end showing his head-to-head record against rival managers.

I love Arsenal, Arsene Wenger and the history of the Premier league, but this autobiography doesn't share many stories or go in depth about anything I thought it would. The achievement of that ambition is covered in chapter 7, which starts with brief appraisals of Campbell, Toure, Lauren, Cole and Lehmann. went the famous article welcoming him to London), bringing in a dietary revolution (for his first game in charge, on the way to the stadium, the players were chanting “We want our Mars bars! That hopeless team stayed more or less unchanged, and didn’t lose another Premier League game until they had already won the title in May. The story of the Invincibles that was masterminded by a man who sees the game of football as simply beautiful.He also dropped interest in Griezmann after the lad had turned down umpteen offers to come to Arsenal . It is these connections, the “crossing paths” and mutual support that are evident throughout his early years in football, whether at AS Mutzig, Mulhouse, or Racing Strasbourg, the club where he juggled playing and coaching roles and that would serve as his first “laboratory” (bringing a psychiatrist into the club for the first time, among other things like “invisible training”—dietary regimes, massage, mental preparation, sleep, quality of life, the people the players surround themselves with), and later at Monaco, Nagoya and Arsenal. He offers studious reflections on the game and his groundbreaking approach to motivation, mindset, fitness and football that was often beautiful to watch. His job in Cannes was the first time that Wenger had left Alsace – there’s a nice story that he made his first signing en route to the South, when after arranging to meet the player in a motorway services, they played four-on-four and one-on-one games of football by way of audition. He admits that all art “contains an element of pain and requires a taste for effort”—it was his choice to give his life in service to football—but it was a completely unbalanced existence, and he was also lucky that the timing was right for his ideas to come to fruition, that certain things lay at the feet of fate.

As expected, I enjoyed reading about his vision for the game, past present and future, his philosophy, his thoughts on the social responsibility of sport.

Although he has a respectable playing career, he is quickly identified as someone with coaching potential and rises through the ranks at Strasbourg and Nancy before being given his first big job at Monaco.