He is a manager that compacts the following season in a few weeks. He looks for intelligent, technical, self driven young players who will coach themselves. He wants his players to trust each other, develop into a unit and express themselves on the pitch with attacking football. I believe that Wenger has his defensive and offensive strategy and his players have to learn that during pre season. He picks his formation to suit the players he has, he works out how many players he has in each position

I cannot believe we are here already. It only seems like yesterday when we witnessed another unsatisfactory display at Craven Cottage. The feeling of watching Theo Walcott equalise in stoppage time and absolutely no emotion going through me is still very fresh in my mind.

Today is the first day of training for Arsenal and some of the Arsenal squad members. A few will be filtering in over the next couple of days I am sure. If reports are anything to go by then we should be surprised to see Gael Clichy being put through his paces.

Pre season is such an important time to football managers at every level and it got me thinking about the different styles of football management. From Sam Allardyce to Phil Brown to the top level managers Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger. All have a plan of how they want to set out their teams, they will want certain type of personnel to carry out those instructions and then they will all have their own method of man management.

There is no magic bullet, managers will have strengths and weaknesses. Alex Ferguson has been famous for his hair dryer treatment in the past but the manager has had to adjust his approach to management as players are a new breed today. Money and ego has caused a shift in power so working with your players instead of just controlling them is more beneficial these days compared to the 70’s and 80’s.

How I would love to see how Brian Clough would have dealt with the likes of Joey Barton and Emmanuel Adebayor today.

So what of our manager? Unlike Brian Clough, he is hardly likely to grab one of his players by the throat and punch him in the face. Arsene is a calm, thoughtful manager who gives his players trust and the freedom of expression. Without having any first hand experience of his management style I can only go by a picture that I have built up over time with comments from former players, interviews from the manager and what we see on match day.

I believe that Arsene Wenger is a pre season manager.

He is a manager that compacts the following season in a few weeks. He looks for intelligent, technical, self driven young players who will coach themselves. He wants his players to trust each other, develop into a unit and express themselves on the pitch with attacking football. I believe that Wenger has his defensive and offensive strategy and his players have to learn that during pre season. He picks his formation to suit the players he has, he works out how many players he has in each position as well as the players who can play in several different positions.

If he is missing a cog in that engine then he will take a look at his scouts reports for a player who fits that requirement and Arsene will try and bring that player to the club.

For example, having lost William Gallas to Tottenham, he would have wanted a replacement that could play the high line, have recovery pace, distribute the ball well from the back and be excellent at winning the ball back quickly.

Laurent Koscielny’s statistics for Lorient the season before he joined our club were fantastic. He ticked all the boxes and had a phenomenal tackling record. Gilles Grimandi is Arsene’s scout for the French leagues and would have pushed Koscielny’s file under Wenger’s nose unless Wenger has made that decision beforehand. Arsene watches non stop football and has an encyclopedic knowledge of players around the world.

Last pre season Arsene adjusted the team from 4-3-3 to 4-2-3-1 in an attempt to stop the counter attack. The counter attack that saw Arsenal suffer at the hands of Manchester United and Chelsea. That adjustment had worked. Jack Wilshere was added to Alex Song ahead of the defence but one change that was not rectified was set pieces. I expect that issue to be high up his list of priorities this time round.

I imagine that once the season starts, Wenger sticks with what his team have been working on. This has its benefits and its own problems. Players are trusted to play through sticky patches and have to play their way into form. When you have the right players with attitude, hunger and skill then it can be wonderfully successful. Wenger’s last title winning team were allowed to play with freedom and flair, they formed into a unit that would kill for each other on the pitch.

A few ingredients have been missing since then and it has not always been the same problems. Go back through the invincibles season and check out the injury record. I haven’t been prepared enough to add them in this article but we had our key performers for most of the games and when they were injured, it was usually for the short term. In recent years this hasn’t been the case.

More often than not we had Campbell, Vieira, Bergkamp and Henry fit and in top shape. Having had a run of games, all those players were purring nicely. When was the last time we had Vermaelen, Cesc and Van Persie let alone the rest free from injury for 10 games in a row?

I would say that the current Arsenal side hasn’t had the win at all costs mentality consistently and this can be addressed with more players with the fight and hunger of Thomas Vermaelen or Robin Van Persie.

I would also guess that part of the reason why we have collapsed at the run in, is because Wenger’s players do not deviate far away from the plan. Perhaps once the record get stuck, we do not have anyone on the pitch to move the needle. Past sides had the likes of Campbell and Vieira to unstick the record and continue through the scratches. The current team currently need to play a record from start to finish without jumping otherwise the chance disappears. It is a big ask to go an entire season without coming across problems that make the engine stutter.

Fans have questioned why Wenger did not move to 4-4-2 at times last season or make substitutions early in games, well I believe it is because he is a pre season manager who shapes his side in that time and he trusts those players to make the difference even when it is not going well. We remember the times when changes were not made and points were dropped but we forget the times when we got through difficulty by staying the same. José Mourinho is the type of manager to remove Shaun Wright-Phillips after only 12 minutes if he is having a bad start to a game. That type of management has its pros and cons like Wenger’s. Players are unlikely to play without expression but Wenger wants his players to have no fear and develop as people as well as players. Two different styles of management that can both give positives and negatives to a squad.

So to this pre season.

Wenger already faces problems. He cannot shape his team and rectify issues because he does not have a settled team. The contract issues with Samir Nasri are yet to reach a conclusion. I don’t know how much he knows about the future of the captain and he is yet to finalise any deals. Obviously Wenger will want new players at the club as soon as possible but in the real world transfers are never as straight forward as they would be on the latest football manager. We do not know the facts, we do not know if agents are an issue, if the selling club is looking to replace before they sell, if the player is waiting etc etc

Some accuse Wenger and Arsenal of being cheap and this is the reason for our lack of activity so far. If that was the case then Manchester City and Chelsea would already have all their work done and dusted by now.

I have mentioned Gervinho on countless occasions and I will do so again. I think Wenger wants to fix the problem of the bus parking teams and he will add the Ivorian to add movement, direct dribbling and goals.

Wenger has already spoken about his desire to add height into the team to deal with set pieces, he will work on penetration from his attacking players and it is likely that the team defending will also be worked on.

In Wenger’s first full season he had a massive pre season by turning a 5-3-2 team into 4-4-2. Adding the steel of Petit and the attacking outlet of Marc Overmars. That team went on to win the double because of his work during pre season. Season 2011/12 is likely to be his biggest since then.