Chronologically his career is laid out culminating with Arsenal where he led the team for twenty-two years. The impact of Wenger on Arsenal is immeasurable and probably because of the nature of modern-day football commercialisation, will never be replicated. At Arsenal he had total control, he developed some of the best football players the English Premiership/ Europe ever witnessed, he achieved an unbeaten season with a team of INVINCIBLES - love saying that. He was instrumental in the building of a new stadium and advanced football style, medical treatment and diet to new levels. I loved Arsene Wenger and I remember watching an interview with him many years ago when success was regularly achieved, him saying that he would know when it would be time to leave Arsenal. Unfortunately, what tarnished his reputation was that he did not. We heard for years about that summer of 2011. He said himself he could easily write a book on the "unbelievable" summer that year. Well.... he did. And nothing he wrote shed any light on what happened. The interesting aspect of the title is that Arsene Wenger's career has been with football teams that played in Red and White as home colours. It is interesting to understand the journey he was on and how complete he was in his commitment to the job and the details, even inspecting the grass on the pitch on a daily basis and discussing its improvement daily with the groundsman. He truly committed his life to football and I am proud that he managed my team.

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. The one that got away: Cristiano Ronaldo playing for Manchester United in 2003, the year he signed for the club. Photograph: Petros Giannakouris/AP French. I speak German and English well, and French very well [laughs]. I can understand Italian, Spanish, some Japanese, but I speak them less well. But if I live for a while there it’s OK.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.” Football to him is not merely a profession, most certainly not a hobby, it is framed much closer to an obsession. For the tall Frenchman, it has been a foe who can bring with it sleepless nights, the occasional gift of unbridled joy but consistently a entity against which he battles to improve himself, his players and in much more than a philosophical sense, the game itself. Many of us deplore the growing inequality in football, where Premier League clubs ‎have incomes of many millions and lower league and semi-professional clubs struggle to survive, mirroring other industries and services, where the economic system produces extreme wealth for a few and poverty for many. How can supporters, players and managers come together to change this? 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.)

In the years following they would holiday on Dein’s boat, and the Arsenal board member would watch Monaco’s matches in France. After some time in Japan, the invite to manage Arsenal arrived. He loved Real Madrid as a youngster I just loved Real Madrid. I thought it the strongest, the most beautiful, the most impressive of all clubs,” he writes. “The players were all in white, looking magnificent. There were players I admired, like Kopa, Puskás and Di Stéfano. It really was the dream club.” He rejected a lot of top jobs I asked my players why we hadn’t won the title,” Wenger writes. “They told me I was putting too much pressure on them, that the goal of winning the Premier League without losing a match seemed unachievable to them.” Gutted - I really wanted this book to be good but to be honest you don’t get anything you couldn’t have learned reading a few post match interviews, and really they would contain more detail.In My Life in Red and White, Wenger charts his extraordinary career, including his rise in France and Japan where he managed Nancy, Monaco and Nagoya Grampus Eight (clubs that also play in red-and-white, like Arsenal!) to his 22 years at the helm of an internationally renowned club from 1996 onwards. He describes the unrest that led to his resignation in 2018, and his current role as Chief of Global Football Development for FIFA. 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. So it’s mixed feelings. Every defeat plays on my mind. And you have to think not what you should have done, but what could you have done?

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. 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. You have to analyse what is justified and what is not. I was, of course, affected by critics. Because nobody can say he is immune to that, especially when you feel you are giving it your best. The critics started in 2016, when we finished second in the league, because we didn’t win the championship. And I would say that if we finished second in the league today, it would be a huge success. But because Leicester won the championship, everybody else was guilty. But they had a super team and they lost only three games in the season. Overall, it is like that when you are a long time somewhere. Being hard on him doesn’t work. Like all artists, he needs to feel supported in his creativity. He has a feel for passing and an exceptional sense of timing when he passes,” he says. “There is something magical and simple about his playing style. The Premier League is a train that goes by at 200 kilometres per hour, and Özil doesn’t always go at this speed, but you always have great affection for his artistry.” His first match was a victory… or was it?

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Towards the end of My Life In Red And White, former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger ponders the conversation that will take place should he eventually reach the gates of heaven.