Twin ambition

ARSENAL’s London Colney training ground is the personal fiefdom of one man.

From the soothing pastel shades in the players' dining room to the elaborate and obsessive secrecy of the facility, the place reeks of Arsene Wenger.

It is from this countryside bunker that Wenger has masterminded two doubles and redrawn the parameters of a footballer's well-being. It is the realisation of a vision for Arsene Wenger.

The two-storey building, which has a vaguely aquatic feel, is impregnable to outsiders without security clearance.

The ground floor is divided in two, with one section dedicated to the club's academy and its school and computer rooms. The other side is for administrative purposes, including Wenger's own office and the coaches area. There is also a generous American-style locker room for the first team, which has the capacity for up to 30 players. Beyond that is an ante-room where they put on their boots before training.

There is already an extension where the visiting nutritionist Yann Rougier has his office, next to the physio area.

Naturally there is a large gym, while central to the downstairs plan is a medical area, jacuzzi and a swimming pool that contains a moveable floor. Its purpose is to treat injuries suffered to different areas of the body.

The depth can be adjusted from six inches to 5'5", giving a player scope to run in shallow water or, strapping a float to his back, to run without touching the bottom.

The pitches themselves are not just as manicured as Highbury they are replicas of Highbury, on the specification of the manager, and in the case of two of them, are undersoil-heated.

On the second floor, adjoining the players' dining area, is a video room which doubles as a makeshift press room for those days, usually Friday, when Wenger talks to journalists before the weekend game.

Writers who wander outside the room for a cigarette or a browse are quickly discouraged and invited to return to their colleagues immediately.

If there is an unusual sense of curiosity amongst Fleet Street's finest, it is understandable. Though the Arsenal manager is comparatively honest and frank during the question-and-answer session, any probing into his personal space is quickly dispatched into a cul de sac.

He feigns disinterest when the subject of Alex Ferguson and Manchester United is raised, but his responses are so laser-beamed that one suspects Wenger spends his waking hours forming the best strategy to do down his greatest nemesis in domestic football.

That suspicion is well-founded. When Arsenal gave up a crucial 2-1 lead over United at Highbury last April within 45 seconds of going ahead in a pivotal Premiership meeting, Wenger was incandescent with rage on the sideline. Later that night in San Danielli, an Italian eatery on Blackstock Road, near the ground, a female friend encouraged Wenger to keep smiling.

"I can't," he whispered. Wenger takes defeat so badly that when Arsenal were defeated at Highbury last season by French club Auxerre in the Champions League, he locked himself in his office, and not even the entreaties of his close friend and club vice chairman David Dein could entice him out.

Both episodes are revealing. Whereas Arsenal have swept all before them at home, the "shift of power" that Wenger promised after the Premiership title in 2002 between Arsenal and United has clearly not taken place.

And in Europe, his side flatters to deceive. Tonight they face Inter Milan in a fresh Champions League campaign. One of their number, the spikey Argentinian, Kily Gonzalez, poked fun at Arsenal this week, insisting that the continental elite laugh at Arsenal's European failures, and the arrogance or naivete which fuels such failures. Few saw the joke in North London.

On Sunday, Wenger brings his side to Old Trafford for the first titanic clash of the season, having dropped sloppy points to Portsmouth at Highbury last weekend. A United victory will see them overtake Arsenal at the head of Premiership affairs and re-ignite the barbed channels of communication between the two most successful managers in England.

The pressure of his position has changed the urbane Frenchman who eschews the therapy of confidantes. Two seasons ago, the media were forced to revise their psychological profile of Wenger after he fell to his knees in gratitude when Lauren converted a crucial late penalty to defeat Tottenham at Highbury. The victory, more or less, secured the Premiership title.

Around the same time last season, Wenger, again in pole title position, was impassive as his side strode into a 2-0 away lead at Bolton's Reebok Stadium. When Youri Djorkaeff pulled one back, Wenger loosened his tie. When Bolton equalised through a bizarre Martin Keown o.g., the tie was gone and Wenger was in a virtual state of undress.

Having, at one point, looked certain, to level his personal battle with Ferguson at three titles apiece since the French man arrived in London, Wenger was left to bite hard on the suggestion that his side retain a self-destructing brittle centre.

"Arsene Wenger is someone I would like to get to know better," Ferguson tells reporters. "People who do know him tell me he is a good man but I don't suppose I'll ever find that out for myself. He never has a drink with you after the game."

This is true, though Wenger was clearly aware of the United manager's fondness for the water of life when he responded, again through the medium of the press: "I drink wine, not whiskey."

Though Ferguson retains a decisive edge in terms of trophies, Wenger has an advantage in psychological combat. "Wenger has got this great way of making a gently barbed comment but dressing it up as if it's a bouquet of flowers," respected Daily Telegraph soccer writer Henry Winter claims.

The Arsenal manager combats Ferguson's fire with ice dry ice. When Ferguson told a gaggle of favoured Sunday newspaper reporters that Arsenal were a belligerent side who "liked a scrap," he employed his favoured excuse to recant when the story appeared ie, I was misquoted.

"Arsene Wenger has a right to be annoyed over this, and I have already dropped him a note explaining the situation and I offered him the apology he deserved."

Wenger's response? "If he has written the letter," he smiled, "it must have been sent by horse because I didn't receive it."

Sighed Fergie: "I'll just have to accept that between Old Trafford and Highbury, appreciation is pretty much a one-way street. (But) I don't think his carping has made a good impression on other managers."

Fergie shouldn't feel too badly. "Even when you know him very well, he keeps his distance," says Philippe Troussier, the ex-Japan manager and part of an extraordinary harvest of coaches including Roger Lemerre, Aime Jacquet, Guy Roux, Henri Michel and Gerard Houllier, who studied with Wenger at the French HQ in Clarefontaine.

"He never calls you. It's always me who makes the effort, who maintains the relationship. Whenever you phone him, if you don't talk, he won't talk. He's like that with everyone, but it has helped him as a coach it allows him to get a reaction out of others."

Wenger has suffered most of his European disappointments in silence, but his frustration is shared in the Highbury dressing room. "The Premiership remains our number one goal," said defender Ashley Cole, "but the Champions League is the one we have not won. We have let ourselves down so far."

The revised format for the second phase means that Arsenal cannot accommodate the annual mid-season dip if they hope to progress to the quarter-finals next March.

However, Wenger's focus is more immediate with a fixture schedule including Inter, Man Utd, Lokomotiv Moscow, Liverpool, Newcastle and Dynamo Kiev over the next month, it is easy to see why. However infuriating this reticence is as a friend, it has served him and Arsenal well as a coach.

"He never goes out of his way," says an exasperated Troussier.

"Why? I don't know. He's shy or someone who can sort out his own problems."

Probably the latter.

Wenger: The Making of a Legend, by Jasper Rees, is published by Short Books and priced 18.99.