His book tells us that he did have a life before Arsenal and now has another after his long relationship with that hallowed club. The classic tale of determination against all the odds to succeed is played out. Some very interesting facts about his life are also relayed. Of course the major part of the book is his time in the Premier League and how he changed it. His ideas, his philosophies and his methods of how he turned my club into not only Premier League Champions, but also changed the whole way of how they played the beautiful game. Consecutive managers at Arsenal have struggled to fit Mesut Özil in their teams, for one reason or another. He’s now been left out of the club’s European squad, and many expect him not to make the cut for the Premier League, either. Arsène Wenger was the man who signed the German midfielder from Real Madrid in 2013, and in the book he explains how he got the best from him. He was manager at Arsenal during a time when football changed dramatically. Traditionally the owners of the big clubs tended to be wealthy local businessmen with a love of the game. Gradually foreign investors injected huge amounts of capital into Premiership clubs, American entrepreneurs, Russian oligarchs and wealthy Asians now own England's top football clubs. Wenger commented on the growing number of staff employed by Arsenal who looked after the marketing and branding of the club. This was an interesting aspect of the book. Wenger was known for having a huge influence over how Arsenal was run from top to bottom, but he’d long been involved in the minutia of his clubs’ business practises. Especially in his role at Nancy in Ligue 1.

Gone for three because I love the man and couldn’t bear to go any lower, but it probably should be a two. It was definitely readable, and I’ve got a deep respect for anything Wenger has to say. However, he doesn’t say all that much. With the wide margins, large font and the fact that the book is fairly short anyway, it doesn’t really go any deeper than as to briefly describe a situation (sometimes a whole premier league season in a couple of paragraphs) before adding a passing comment or two, or a general description of how he felt during each period. As too was the notion of philosophy. That Wenger was a visionary, revolutionary of the game is unquestionable. His first years in particular at Arsenal and in English football changed the course of both, and the book explores some of his key thoughts and ideas that underpinned his management, including his expectations of players, the psychology of the game and player management. It’s one example but there were so many. The history of a big club is full of missed great players! Arsène Wenger is undoubtedly a great manager. He took Arsenal from being a mid table team to champions and changed the entire dynamic of the club in terms of dietary needs and preparation, to the point it's now the norm throughout the English game. So even though I'm not an Arsenal fan I thought I'd enjoy his autobiography as he shared insights on his life and career.You brought about a revolution in the way British footballers considered their diet and wellbeing. Psychology and mindfulness are the current fashion in elite sport. What do you think could be the next big game-changer? Arsenal fans may benefit from, but ultimately take issue with his insights regarding finances and the reality of the restraints on the club’s ability to delve into the transfer market in his latter years. Banished was the players’ diet of fizzy drinks and chocolate, introduced were caffeine drops on sugar cubes at half time, physical and mental preparation was revolutionized, relative to what was then the norm. Facilitating the improvement of human performance through tailored man-management is a constant ambition. Wow, what a disappointment this book was. As a lifelong fan of the Arsenal and ‘Le Professeur’ Arsene Wenger I was hoping this would be a detailed look into the man, the teams, the players and the matches that defined them. Instead you get a whistlestop tour of his career with the author providing what is essentially a top line summary of some of the events, not even always chronologically. But what really twines the book together is a showcase of just how far dedication, obsession and loyalty can take someone. By any measure, Wenger is obsessive, and has often been excessively so. His passion for the sport in general has never wavered, and his vision is as clear now as it has ever been; something that strikes a power chord in the final chapter, where he outlines his plans at FIFA to increase development of the rules, young players and contribute to the growth of women's football too.

The book is perhaps most interesting on Wenger’s early life and career – as this is little covered elsewhere. Another area that is perhaps even clearer from the book than I already thought it was is how the Invincible Season was an extremely deliberate and very explicit target (and it was interesting to read this part only 5/6 games into the 2020-21 season when already every team in the Premiership has lost). You received a lot of criticism over your career, more so towards the end of your time with Arsenal. Was there any that particularly affected you? For Arsenal fans and football scholars, the release of Arsene Wenger’s first ever autobiography, My Life in Red and White, signalled a much-anticipated event, a chance to hear from the man who stamped his mark on Arsenal and the Premier League, a man who divided opinion but unquestionably brought success, a man who was notoriously private and enigmatic away from the pitch, but who wore his heart on his sleeve during matches. But those hoping for a no-holds-barred confessional, with revelations about his players, opponents and fellow managers will be disappointed. Wenger is nothing if not a principled man – as Arsenal fans will attest, either positively citing his loyalty to the club or conversely bemoaning his stubbornness to see out his contract – so it should be no real surprise that instead of a sensationalised tell-all, the autobiography is as measured, moderate and considered as the man himself, with astute observations on his own childhood and entry into football and thoughtful reflections on management and the game. The book just fails to come to life – I was at many of the games featured in the book but almost never did I feel that the book was adding anything to spark my memories of the matches. And many iconic moments are simply not mentioned at all.I do hope that history is sympathetic to Wenger. Many of his contemporaries, were not. He was very successful. He did bring great times to the club. He does make contentious claims in his book that the rivalry with the other lot, who play in white and blue does not hold the same 'tensions'. He also claims that it is 'harder to win the Premier League than the Champion's League'. On both points I am not sure. Unfortunately, his own fans that we gooners once were, would, I am sure, argue vociferously that the rivalry will be as fierce and tension filled as always and that if the second point was correct, why did we not win the Champion's League? I was disgusted at Arsene's hounding by the press after a vicious journalist spread lies which although totally unfounded resulted in his 12 year old step-son being hounded. This hurt him deeply. That passage is quite typical of the entire book: there is no meaningful subjective analysis here whatsoever. No individuality that defines this as an autobiography. Just these constipated sentences.

Obviously I'm slightly biased, as a long-suffering Arsenal fan, but this was a great read. It plays out pretty much how you'd expect it to - beginning with his early years in starkly rural Alsace and all the challenges that encompassed, to his position as a player-coach as AS Nancy and Cannes, through his troubled tenure at Monaco, his famous 22-year life at Arsenal and ends on his current position at FIFA. Sometimes Wenger’s competitiveness spilled over, notably in his epic, bristling clashes with first Ferguson and then Chelsea’s José Mourinho. But anyone expecting mud-slinging from his autobiography has misread Wenger. There’s mention of Ferguson’s “crushing authority” on English football, but he nimbly sidesteps anything more damning; Mourinho isn’t mentioned once. “I didn’t want it to be a book of revenge or frustration or of injustice,” he says. “I didn’t want to show: ‘Well, he did that to me’ – all these things. But you know what happened in your life and you have to rise above that. I wanted it to be a positive experience of life. You cannot have the life I’ve had until now and be negative.”

For the very first time, world-renowned and revolutionary football manager Arsène Wenger tells his own story. He opens up about his life, sharing principles for success on and off the field with lessons on leadership, and vivid tales of his 22 years managing Arsenal to unprecedented success. There are a million questions that Arsenal fans would want Wenger to answer. The answers, unfortunately, are either missing altogether from My Life in Red and White, or expressed in a way that is long familiar to us: the English players stopped drinking and eating Mars bars; he used to have his ups and downs with Ferguson but they get on fine now. 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. (Wenger beat Steve McClaren 83.3% of the time; he beat Mourinho 10% of the time.) The writing also it has to be says is a little off - its hard to know if it is the original or the translation, but its an odd assortment of very simple and clunky sentences with rather enigmatic statements (which I suspect are in the French original).