The Professor

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Send mail to firsteditionbookstores@gmail.com with questions or comments about this website.
Copyright © 2004-2008 First Edition Bookstores
Last modified: 10-Nov-2008

The Professor

Author: Myles Palmer

Binding: Softcover, 384 pages
Publisher: Virgin Books (2005)

ISBN: 0753510979

Price: RM49.50

Synopsis

The Professor, the first and best book about Arsene Wenger, has now been updated to describe the challenges facing Arsenal in the age of Jose Mourinho, Roman Ambramovich and Chelski. At the moment British sports fans are all wondering about the long-term implications of a Russian billionaire spending £214 million on new players in a little over two years. Chelsea had virtually won the Premiership by January 2005 - and they look even stronger now. The Professor kicks off with Arsene Wenger's Mission Statement when he first came to the club in 1996, sketches in his career in France and Japan, and sets the scene for his arrival by explaining why George Graham's ageing team was unable to repeat the title victories of 1989 and 1991, and why Bruce Rioch was sacked after one season. In describing the narrative of Wenger's nine seasons in detail, Palmer analyses the manager's obsession with pace, fitness and nutrition. He also pays tribute to the audacity of his attacking style of play, which is now admired all over the world. Boring Arsenal have become spectacular Arsenal. The Professor contains a wealth of original eyewitness reporting, including, uniquely, descriptions of several colourful AGMs. The bitter rivalry with Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United is, of course, a key theme. Arsenal's controversial clashes with United are vividly re-constructed. The chapter describing last season, titled The Season of Fabregas and Senderos, proves to be prescient. Typically, Palmer pulls no punches regarding the damaging hangover which followed a 2-0 win by United which ended Arsenal's 49-game unbeaten run in the league. "Why could the team not bounce back after a defeat? Probably because of a French culture in the dressing room and a Gallic tendency to dwell on injustices and whinge on for months about things that Anglo-Saxon footballers would laugh off in two or three days."
This edition went to press before Wenger's ruthless sale of Vieira to Juventus, but the reasons behind that bold decision will be clear to anyone who reads Chapter 12. If you care about Ian Wright, Tony Adams, Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira, and you treasure the golden moments of the Wenger era, you will want to read this book.

From the Author
FOOTBALL moves on very fast, so I'm glad that I've been able to nail down an exciting period in the history of London's biggest club. What I have written about the 1997-98 Double season, for instance, could not have been re-constructed in the future, even if an author was to talk to every Arsenal player. What is here was seen at the time, lived at the time, shared with friends at the time, and written at the time. A lot of the book is like that. This 5th edition of The Professor is a chunky 376-page paperback about Arsene Wenger and his teams, his methods, his successes and failures. It is dense with description, detail, opinion and analysis. But despite being more dense and compact than ever before, I still think it's easy to read. People still write to me and say they've read the whole book right through in one day. I find that amazing, as I am a slow reader and a slow writer - The Professor took about a billion hours to write. Since I was an 18-year old grammar school boy I've wanted to write a book about football. So I'm glad I was eventually asked to do one.

About the Author
Myles Palmer has written about football for The Scotsman, 90 Minutes, FourFourTwo, and The Scottish Sunday Herald. He has appeared on radio programmes and BBC television's Newsnight. Many of the ideas in The Professor originated on ANR, a popular website. Myles Palmer is also a feature writer and rock critic.

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