Will Brad Pitt play Arsene Wenger in Moneyball the remake?
Adapt or die! How many times have we heard this? But finally Arsene Wenger knows that this is the way to go, to be fair, Wenger always manged to replace players with equal success when they leave Arsenal. When Patrick Viera left, not many people understood why Cesc Fabregas was the replacement in midfield for the iron Viera, but as it is in the book and movie Moneyball, Billy Beane (Played by Brad Pitt) said "You guys are thinking of replacing the players that left, we cannot compete against the Yankess and the Red Sox we must think differently for these positions...adapt or die"! How true, he built the team around Fabregas and changed the way they played, Fabregas was not the enforcer like Viera, but he brought more to the position in-terms of distribution and attacking dimension. When Fabregas left he managed with Song and Van Persie, now they have left too!
Somehow Wenger has managed to juggle the puritan class football, but this time he has an iron clad defence, so it got better amazingly for Arsenal who are unbeaten so far and have sold their best players. In their first four games now they only let in 1 goal, they drew 0-0 with Sunderland and Stoke City, beat Liverpool 2-0 at Anfield and all hell broke loose in the fourth game against Southampton winning 6-1. Like Fabregas and Viera previously, he has replaced Alex Song who left for Barcelona by putting Mikel Arteta in his position.
The steel is back in Arsenal now, because of a former player and good servant to the club Steve Bould, who won the old First Divison for Arsenal in 1991. He was a first class defender together with Tony Adams, he is now back as assistant coach in charge of defence, he has insisted on being given full authority on how to shape the defence and Wenger finally has accepted this. In the past former assistant coach, Pat Rice was not given this full freedom, but Wenger knows he cannot play this role too long, the fans are losing patience, there has been no trophies now for almost 7 seasons, though Wenger will never get sacked by the board he has made good money for them by selling key players for a good price and making a tidy profit time after time and season after season. Ultimately he is satisfying the key stakeholders his boss and like anybody in a 9-5 job, that is the name of the game, in Wenger we trust after all.
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