I never said he was #1, I said he should be the #1 coach to play under for what he has done to English football. You could learn a lot playing under him and probably end up a much better player.
If you want trophies, just go to a club that wins trophies, it doesn't matter who manages Barca, Real or Bayern.
So Wenger is the only play bringing foreign players into the premier league, or even the first, is this some kind of ridiculous joke?
The majority of top notch players would pretty much improve from 18-23 no matter what team they played for as long as they actually played. Arsenal, like every other team in the world, has a massively larger list of failures than successes, and Wenger buying lots of foreign players is really no different to the majority of teams in the premier league.
Wenger DID NOT attract players, or foreign players, or make the premier league an exciting league at all. MONEY DID. Without the TV money 60-70% of the players who left Spain/Holland/Germany/Italy would have not have come to England. Money talks, always has.
In 95 Arsenal had 2 dutch players, that season having bought Platt and Bergkamp. In 96, first year under Wenger, they bought 5 players, 3 frenchies, 1 Icelandic player and one English player, giving 6 foreign players in the first team.
In 95 Utd had Schmeichel, Cantona and Prunier(yeah I have no idea who either) and bought Van der Gouw in that year as well, they sold Kanchelskis that season. In 96 they bought 5 players also, OGS, Johnsen, Poborsky, Cruyff and Sheringham.
Yup, Wenger was absolutely the first manager to buy exciting players, foreign players and have an exciting team. Cantona and Bergkamp only joined the league because of what Wenger did to it........
In 97 Arsenal bought 7-8 foreign players, but that is because 97-98 saw the tv money double. Utd had a stable title winning side that needed small changes, Arsenal were rebuilding under a new manager... shocking. Every team going through a major rebuild as the EPL tv money started to surpass every other league saw a huge influx of foreign players.
Not magic, absolutely nothing to do with Wenger, widespread throughout the league, easily explained. It also explains the change in approach, money breeds (somewhat) professionalism. When players were on sub 1k a week and > 1mil buys were very rare, being less than peak fitness wasn't a particularly big deal. What a club deems appropriate for players on £500 a week who cost them £5k to buy and for players who cost £40mil and take £5mil a year in wages from the are unsurprisingly not the same.
Wenger joined at the time money went through the roof, he may have been one of the first to take a more scientific approach in the league, but the league transformed because of what it was. Was he responsible for identical changes in basically every single possible sport you can name today.... I really don't think so. Sports science was not invented by Wenger, nor only used in football or even just the single league.
The professional "athlete" state footballers have grown into is visible from Utd down to Dag and Red, from football to ping pong.
The only sport I think has gone pretty much untouched by sports science, is darts, maybe bowling as well.
