Wenger’s Arsenal legacy hard to match, says Reyes

Wenger will leave the Gunners after Sunday’s final Premier League game of the season away at Huddersfield as his 22-year tenure comes to an end.

He added that the years after the club’s move from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium in 2006 – when he had to manage with restricted budgets – were his most challenging.

“A big part of the quality of a manager is experience and I’m more experienced than I was before”, Wagner said. I get so many messages from players, that are not about the trophies we won together, they are more about the human aspect. “Not the most glamorous maybe, but the most hard”.

“It’s not really happened because other clubs have used outside resources”.

Despite having one less competition to worry about they are now sixth in the Premier League and look certain not to achieve a top four finish, hanging their only hopes on winning the Europa League.

The 68-year-old claimed that audiences were down for midweek Champions League ties, and a move to glamour European fixtures on weekends under a new format would be attractive.

Speaking on Thursday at his final press conference, Wenger urged his successor to maintain the club’s values and to respect what he has built during his 22 years in north London.

Arsenal had a great chance to kill off the tie in the first leg but were held to a 1-1 draw despite a one-man advantage, then lost 1-0 in Madrid. I thought maybe we won’t score the second goal, but we can not concede – they never crossed the halfway line. Will they have to sell players?

My family were born and bred in the sports of GAA, so growing up I was more likely to be watching my dad hurling on the fields that will be forever Ireland of Ruislip and new Eltham.

At the time, most kids where I grew up supported Ipswich, who were enjoying an incredible period, but I chose the boys in yellow.

‘We have gone through a season of ups and downs but they have always created something special and I would like that to come out in the last game by the way we play it. There were no special frills or presentations, just the normal feeling that Wenger would rather be out on the training pitch with a whistle in his hand than sitting in front of the microphones.

“Huddersfield Town has shown that you should never think you’re not able to make steps, you always have to try and do it”.

Their previous plan for a European league was to pit the 16 best teams in the continent from the highest ranked leagues into one competition, combining both league and knockout formats.

He also revealed that his grandfather would not allow him to watch football as he considered it an “English sport”.

“I have 20,000 trees out there and I saw everyone like that [pointing to the ground]”, he said. It is a pleasant surprise.

“It’s hard because this is my life, every year”, he said. Every day is not a pleasure. I would say the legacy is what you think is important, with the way you behave with your players.