Love him or hate him, Arsene Wenger has and is still creating a legacy that any current manager in the world of football would be proud to call their own. Three Premier League titles, six FA cups, and a brand new, state-of-the-art £470 million stadium have all come about in large part thanks to le Professeur. An interesting debate between Gooners that has stemmed from Wenger’s impact on the club has been what his greatest achievement was, with many stating the move to the Emirates as the pinnacle of his managerial career.

The big move

Back in 2001, Arsenal gained council approval for construction of a brand new stadium at Ashburton Grove following the purchase of an industrial waste disposal estate on the land. By the start of 2004, after an incredible amount of financial planning, the club broke ground on the site that would finally become the Emirates Stadium. For the 2006/07 Premier League season, Arsenal finally moved to Ashburton Grove thus ending their 93-year stint at Highbury.

The amount of preparation and the repercussions from making this massive move were large and incredibly widespread. In a business sense, this was by far Wenger’s greatest achievement during his tenure as manager of Arsenal. Unlike many other stadium projects of the recent past, the Arsenal board received no money from government subsidies to help finance the construction of the Emirates. A £260 million loan combined with sponsorship deals from Nike and Emirates, along with many smallers of revenue, helped contribute to the stadium funding but the loan repayment was never going to be an easy task.

As a result, Wenger was faced with a tough prospect of having to use the transfer market to fund this loan repayment at the expense of sinking into football obscurity. While high ticket and merchandise prices, concerts, national team football, bond schemes, sponsorship deals, and companies buying stakes in Arsenal all contributed to this large loan repayment, the transfer policy was the hardest to manage.

The prospect of the Gunners having to constantly offload their top talent for profit was never appealing, but having to maintain top-level football with the remaining squad was even worse. Somehow le Prof managed it as Arsenal have yet to fail in securing a Champions League spot in the past eighteen attempts.

While many football fans will not consider that feat as one of true success, managing that and an attempt at making an actual profit out of the transfer market has been impressive to watch. Add to that, Arsenal's back-to-back FA Cup victories the year after Wenger and Ivan Gazidis claimed that the club were free of their financial shackles and it becomes clearer as to what a challenge and success the move to the Emirates truly was. There are many Gooners however, that would cite another monumental journey as Wenger’s greatest success.

The invincibles

No one other than Arsene Wenger and his talent filled 03/04 Arsenal side would have believed that they were to repeat and even surpass the feat of Preston North End going unbeaten in the inaugural season of The Football League. Yet, when the final whistle blew on the 15th of May, 2004, Arsenal not only secured a 2-1 victory over Leicester City, they had finished their season having not incurred a single Premier League loss.

That feat cemented Wenger and his Invincibles side in the presence of footballing royalty alongside Juventus, AC Milan, Perugia, Athletic Bilbao, and Real Madrid as the only teams in the past century to have gone a season unbeaten. Out of those sides, Arsenal and Juventus have been the only sides to manage this in the 21st century, making the feat even more of a rarity.

Though the season did not bring Arsenal any cup trophies with exits in the League Cup and FA Cup at the semi-final stages alongside the Champions League at the quarter-finals, there were still individual high points. League doubles over Chelsea and Liverpool added to a very impressive 5-0 and 4-1 double over Leeds United. The single most impressive performance from the Arsenal came at the San Siro in the Champions League group stage match against Inter Milan. The Gunners ended that evening as 5-1 winners with none other than Thierry Henry stealing the show with a brace.

Overall, Wenger’s Arsenal had an incredibly successful campaign and ended in a feat that football fans may never get to see in English football in the next century. Anyone who was to argue against Arsenal’s 03/04 campaign being one of Arsene Wenger’s greatest footballing accomplishments ever would be severely misinformed.

Wenger’s greatest ever?

When comparing these two great feats in Wenger’s career, it all comes down to which mentality someone debating the matter has. For someone looking at a bigger, long-term picture in terms of the success of a club in both a financial and indirectly, a footballing sense, then the Emirates was Wenger’s greatest achievement. For a football purist looking solely at the footballing achievements of a club then Wenger’s Invincibles easily eclipses the Emirates as the greatest feat in his career.

Replicability is another aspect to consider in looking at truly great feats. Though the scale of Arsenal’s move to the Emirates has so far not been replicated, other top teams have successfully relocated in recent years. Bayern Munich, Juventus and Benfica have all constructed new stadiums since the turn of the century and have all had great success in their respective leagues immediately following the move. Though their stadiums were built with varying financial support from the government, with the constant increase of money in the world of football, the future potential of clubs self-funding large new stadiums keeps increasing.

The same cannot be said for any club’s potential for going unbeaten. As much as we have seen some leagues forming trends towards being one or two team leagues, there has been no imminent sign of an undefeatable team emerging. It can be said that the game of football is a lot more unpredictable than the world of business. In that regard, it is a lot more difficult to see any successful team replicate Arsenal’s unbeaten season than their impressive move to the Emirates. As a result, it has to be argued that Arsene Wenger’s greatest footballing achievement was the creation of the Invincibles.

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About the author
David Bowyer
Arsenal fan through and through. Currently studying at Hood College in Frederick, MD.