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Arsene Wenger already getting job offers, reveals former Arsenal chief David Dein
ARSENE WENGER is already receiving job offers just 48 hours after announcing that he is leaving Arsenal.
Former Gunners vice-chairman David Dein has been fielding calls from rival clubs asking to be put in touch with Wenger.
It was Dein who appointed Wenger in 1996 before being forced out of the club in a boardroom power struggle with Stan Kroenke in 2008.
But he remains Wenger’s closest confidante and revealed: “He will have no shortage of offers from clubs.”
Speaking to Sky Sports News, Dein said: “I had calls from various people on Saturday asking ‘can I speak to Arsene?’
“The question is whether he will want to do it anymore. It’s getting more and more difficult and it’s become a bit of a pressure cooker.
“This decision has been coming. At the end of last season I was discussing with him whether he was going to stay or leave and he was a bit undecided.
“It was definitely an option for him to leave last year but he felt responsible for the players coming through and decided to stay.
“But in the last few weeks I felt it was getting more difficult for him, particularly with the team results, and I thought then it was unlikely that he was going to stay on after the end of the season.”
Yet Dein does not rule out the idea of Wenger, 68, taking on a new managerial challenge and says: “Over the last few years he has been approached by some of the biggest clubs in the world.
“Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, the [England] national team… they all wanted him at some stage.
“He’s going to be 69 in October but he keeps himself extraordinarily fit. He’s the same weight as when I first met him, he’s got a very active mind and such a knowledge of the game.
“Life without Arsenal is going to be tough for him initially. It’s a way of life and he will feel there is unfinished business.
“It’s rather like a bereavement and the various stages. The first stage is denial and finally you get to acceptance and you move on.
“So Arsene has to have a good holiday and decide what he wants to do next.
“But he will go down in history as the greatest Arsenal manager ever. What he has done for the club is immeasurable.
“We’ve built a fantastic training ground and a sensational stadium and it was all on the back of the 2004 Invincibles that we managed to get the financing for the stadium.”