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

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I was at the training ground to interview Wenger the afternoon before the last game of the Invincibles season, and while I was waiting for him in his office, a Frenchman I didn’t recognise came in and slammed his hand down hard on the manager’s desk. Every single Certificate of Authenticity is also verified by our chief executive officer - to guarantee that the item is genuine and hand signed. He offers studious reflections on the game and his groundbreaking approach to motivation, mindset, fitness and football that was often beautiful to watch.

Granted my mother was a gifted linguist but I think Wenger’s obsession with football led to him being so isolated that he was unable properly to absorb the language. In fact, it was a cigarette and decent English skills from his months spent in Cambridge as a twenty-nine-year-old that got him an invite to David Dein’s house where a most enduring friendship began because of Arsene’s skillful charades rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream! But you will not learn much about the backroom of Arsenal, about the dubious decisions taken over the years, about strategies and tactics (except for the choice of zonal marking at Monaco when everybody was marking man-to-man).

Fortunately, by that time it would clearly have been pointless even to have made the attempt, so I was spared the embarrassment of a refusal. Sadly, the chapters on his time at Monaco, in Japan and mostly Arsenal stay at a very surface level. Wenger took the decision to keep him for the last year of his contract hoping he’d relent and sign during the season but prepared to lose him for nothing if he didn’t . He reflects on Arsenal's astonishing domestic triumphs and bittersweet European campaigns; signing - and selling - some of the world's most talented players; moving the Gunners to their new home, the Emirates Stadium; and the unrest that led to his departure in 2018 and subsequent role as Chief of Global Football Development for FIFA. Certainly the most honest footballing autobiography was that of Tom Finney (I went and paid my respects to his statue outside the ground when we played Preston North End at Deepdale).

Registered address Unit 7, Airfield Industrial Estate, Airfield Way, Christchurch, Dorset, BH23 3PE. 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. This site is my blog of reviews of classic and contemporary sports books that I have read and am reading.

The paragraph on Cole includes the sentence “It is one of the great regrets of my life that I lost him to Chelsea, thanks to a misunderstanding in the negotiations with his agent”. One of the things I did enjoy reading about was how his constant pursuit for elegance and grace led to a focus on details, in preparation, technical aspects, and in how he conducted himself on and off the pitch, in turn passing along those values to the players under him. My answer to the dinner guest question hasn’t changed and I won’t dissuade anyone from reading My Life and Lessons in Red and White. Much of the chapter is devoted to a description of these changes and their effects of day-to-day life at the club.