Arsene Wenger has revealed that the 'hardest' period of his Arsenal tenure was not during the era of Premier League success, but rather when the club moved to the Emirates Stadium.
Wenger left Arsenal at the end of the 2017/18 season after 22-years in charge of the Gunners in which he won three league titles and seven FA Cups.
But despite his success in the early period of his career in north London, Wenger admits his greatest achievement was consistently keeping Arsenal in the top four once the club completed its move from Highbury to the Emirates. The Gunners qualified for the Champions League group stage for 19 consecutive years under his watch from 1998/99 to 2016/17.
Speaking at the Legends of Football dinner, which raised money for the charity Nordoff Robbins, Wenger said: "I arrived from Japan on October 1, 1996, because of David Dein and with only one luggage piece. I knew it could be [a] very short [stay].
“As much as I pushed the club, we travelled every Sunday with David to look for new training grounds to build a new stadium, to give you a picture, the turnover of the club was about £70million. Two years later, it was £90m and that was divided in three: £30m gates, £30m sponsorship and £30m television. Today, the turnover of Arsenal is about £420m, with £180m from television. That means the television money has been multiplied by six.
“When we decided to build the stadium, we’d go to £200m, to £400m, and we had become an industry and not a football club anymore, because we spoke in all the board meetings about how much we can pay back. We moved up to £428m. This was the time where we had £90m turnover and we had to pay back £22m per year to pay back the stadium and, overall, that means a completely different state of life for Arsenal.
“At the same time, in 2007, David Dein left and the banks asked as a guarantee that I signed for five years. I agreed to extend my contract. This was the difficult period — from March until the end of May, I didn’t sleep. We had to be every second year at least in the Champions League because the income was very important. As much as I get credit today for the first 10 years, from 1996 to 2006, the hardest work I did was during that period where we were on the edge.
“We had to sell our best players and at the same time came Chelsea with unbelievable money, Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City. We were on a level where we could not compete financially. Having said that, I turned down many offers because I felt always that I was in a club who had a touch of class. There was a respect for tradition, there was an audacity to more forward and a feeling of being together.”
The Frenchman is yet to take up another role in football since his departure from Arsenal, but he hinted at a potential technical role with FIFA: “To share what I have learned in the game. Maybe with FIFA, yes," he said.
"World football has a huge responsibility now and if I can help a little bit, why not?”
