With no trophies and Tottenham set to finish above Arsenal for the first time in 21 years, pressure is building on Arsene Wenger like never before. Is his time up? Adam Bate looks at the reasons for his success and why there’s little reason to expect a repeat… One of the key moments for Biff Tannen in the Back to the Future series was when he got hold of the Grays Sports Almanac that revealed the winners of every forthcoming sporting event for years to come. Tannen was transformed into a visionary, armed with the information that his contemporaries craved. Success became a formality.Perhaps thats how it felt for Arsene Wenger when he arrived in England in the autumn of 1996. Hed been a top-class coach in his native France, of course, but in the Premier League his encyclopedic knowledge of superior markets and ideas dwarfed that of his new peers. As an intellectual Gulliver in Lilliput, it didnt take too long for his impact to be felt. By his own admission, Wenger was left bemused by the fact that he could assemble an entire squad for the price quoted to sign Graeme Le Saux from Blackburn. And so, he did just that. Nicolas Anelka had already been acquired for less than £1m. Patrick Vieira joined from AC Milan for just £3.5m. And that was just the transfer market. Wenger says his past successes mean Arsenal fans expect trophies each year On the training ground, the focus on muscle toning was new to old pros. Sharper sessions timed to the second. The introduction of periodisation. Conditioning work. Nutrition ideas from Japan. Dieticians such as Yann Rougier. Regular attention from osteopath Philippe Boixel. None of it seems outlandish now but these changes were significant at the time.When we had the first pre-season under Wenger, it was completely different from anything I experienced in my whole career, Nigel Winterburn told The Independent. There were footballs all over the pitch! What? Footballs! It was unheard of, a football session on the first day back off pre-season training. I had never heard of it.Its difficult to appreciate the context. The previous example of a foreign manager at such as high-profile club had been when Dr Josef Venglos was appointed by Aston Villa in 1990. He arrived just weeks after taking Czechoslovakia to a World Cup quarter-final but was still Dr Who to the press pack. Villas players didnt enjoy the post-match warm downs. The house that Arsene built: But is he the same manager today? Venglos was a pioneer but having taken over from the successful Graham Taylor, only wins wouldve earned him patience and he couldnt get them. Wengers combination of better ideas and better players brought improved results and so the story was very different. Experienced players such as Winterburn, Tony Adams and Martin Keown bought into it.He harnessed this existing defence and fused it with a much-improved attacking unit. The likes of Marc Overmars and Emmanuel Petit helped Arsenal to a league and cup double in 1998. A remarkable achievement in itself, but what puts Wenger on a level few have reached is that he built another team too. Only Vieira and Dennis Bergkamp were still first-choice picks in the Invincibles of 2004.That Arsenal side, the team of Thierry Henry and Robert Pires, remains the only one to go through an entire Premier League season without suffering a defeat. That they did so by playing some of the most exciting football this country has ever seen only adds to the achievement. But 12 years on and the wait for the next Premier League title goes on. Arsenal won the Premier League title without losing a game in 2003/04 What went wrong? Undeniably, there have been external factors. It got harder as opponents rose up like never before. With Chelsea emerging as a genuine force, Arsenal were no longer competing with only Manchester United. Liverpool had their moments too and more recently there has been Manchester City and Tottenham to contend with as well.It got harder as the club managed the transition to the new stadium. Supporters were tolerant in that respect, noting the managers complaints about the financial doping of others. But that sympathy has long since dissipated, giving way to a more troubling thought: that the real issue for Wenger is that so many of his advantages have now been neutralised.He had enjoyed what is known in marketing as first-mover advantage - the benefits that stem from being the initial occupant in a market, gaining control of resources others cannot. But now others have caught up. Its Wengers strength no more. He is a victim of his own success given that his ideas and principles are now so ubiquitous they do not set him apart. Ive been tremendously loyal to the manager. Id like to stay that way if I could, but Im just finding that the solutions are getting harder for him to solve. Charlie Nicholas Former Arsenal forward Charlie Nicholas feels it is a problem. Ive been tremendously loyal to the manager, Nicholas told Sky Sports. Id like to stay that way if I could, but Im just finding that the solutions are getting harder for him to solve. Its not easy to find the right players but this is where we have always loved Arsene.Hes always found magical players or turned them into magical players. Hes always had that talent. Now that talent seems to be becoming harder. You cant get Nicolas Anelka now for half a million or Thierry Henry for £8m. But other clubs seem to find them. And if other clubs can find them...Perhaps its prudence that persuaded him against moving for Anthony Martial. Certainly, globalisation has opened things up to allow Newcastle, Leicester and West Ham to swoop upon the French market in recent years. Wenger knew about them all. He just didnt know whether to sign them. His recent risk-free acquisitions have arrived for north of £30m. A section of Arsenals supporters have lost faith in their long-serving manager Where once ignorance of others might have protected Wenger against criticism, allowing it to appear as if World Cup winners such as Henry had been plucked from obscurity, the game has now changed sufficiently to allow Arsenal fans to implore him to sign Gonzalo Higuain - and then feel justified when seeing the Argentine score over 30 goals in a Serie A season.Arsenal have these funds and with the stadium having long since ceased to be a viable excuse, Wenger can no longer point to the financial advantages of club rivals. Particularly when Leicester are champions and, perhaps more damagingly, Tottenham are above them in the table, too. It seems St Totteringhams Day wont be coming this year, but perhaps another day has arrived.In Back to the Future, the results in Tannens Almanac only went up to 2000. Hed secured his legacy by then but the magic touch was gone. Wenger managed to extend his success into the new millennium but the fear is that he too no longer has the answers. The fear is that Arsene Wenger is a man out of time. Also See: Welbeck out for nine months Who is Granit Xhaka? China Jerseys Wholesale . Bradley is one of eight players selected to the team who also played in this years World Cup in Brazil. The MLS all-stars will compete against German giants Bayern Munich in Portland on Aug. China Jerseys Cheap . Pearce had a career-high four hits and drove in two runs, and Wei-Yin Chen shut down Texas again as the Orioles completed a four-game sweep of the Rangers with a 5-2 victory on Thursday night. https://www.chinajerseyscheap.us/. Rockies manager Walt Weiss was unhappy, too. Weiss addressed the issue in a 15-minute meeting with his pitcher and catcher after the Rockies gave up 14 hits and lost 10-1. De La Rosa lasted only 4 1-3 innings and allowed five runs in his first opening-day start. Fake China Jerseys . The 18-time champions, who havent won the title since 1990, moved two points behind Arsenal after the leaders were stunned 6-3 at Manchester City on Saturday. Defending champion Manchester United trails Arsenal by 10 points after winning 3-0 at Aston Villa to avoid a third successive league loss. Cheap Jerseys From China .Y. - Geno Smith shouted a couple of mighty expensive expletives.LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Every time that Towson missed a shot, it seemed as if somebody from Kansas was there to corral the rebound, throw an outlet pass and start the Jayhawks on the fast break. Usually it ended up with a dunk. Andrew Wiggins of Vaughan, Ont., and the high-flying Jayhawks put together a highlight reel in the first half Friday night, rolling to a big lead over the overmatched Tigers. The nations No. 2 team cruised in the second half to an 88-58 win in its opening game of the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament. "When were playing our game, no one can stop us," said Wiggins, the star freshman who led the Jayhawks (4-0) with 16 points. "When we play in the flow of the game, no one can stop us. We have too many tools to use. When were playing like we did today, nobody can stop us." Andrew White III finished with 13 points, Wayne Selden added 12 and Perry Ellis had 10 for the Jayhawks, who used a 22-2 run to take a 49-16 lead by halftime. From there, they might as well have started to look ahead to their game against Wake Forest in the Bahamas on Thanksgiving Day. The Jayhawks are scheduled for three games in the rest of the Battle 4 Atlantis. "Hopefully this will be a good stretch for us to start putting some stuff together," Kansas coach Bill Self said. "Were making steps in the right direction." Jerrelle Benimon had 21 points and 10 rebounds to lead Towson (3-2), the favourite in the Colonial Athletic Association. Rafriel Guthrie scored 15 points off the bench. "Theyre deep, theyre athletic, and unfortunately for us, they were locked in," Towson coach Pat Skerry said with a shake of his head. "If theres a better team in the country, Id like to find out who they are, and I certainly dont want to play them." After stumbling a bit out of the gate, the uber-athletic Jayhawks reeled off 11 straight points to seize control. Six of the points came on rim-rattling dunks, two of those by Tarik Black. Towson quickly became rattled and started to settle for a cacophony of quick 3-pointers, ill-advised shots in the paint and tightly contested jumpers. All of its misses only served to fueel the Kansas fast break, which piled up 22 points in the first 20 minutes.dddddddddddd "All of them run," Benimon said. "They just get up and down." The Tigers were still within 27-14 with 7:42 left in the half, but they only managed one field goal from there as Kansas used a 22-2 finishing flurry to blow the game open. Wiggins scored nine of his 14 first-half points during the run, and was involved in both of the highlights. The first came after a miss by the Tigers Timajh Parker-Rivera. The ball ended up with Frank Mason, whose pretty one-bounce, cross-court pass to Wiggins resulted in an easy dunk. The second highlight came after Mike Burwell missed and Mason again got the ball in the open court. He fed it to fellow freshman Conner Frankamp who, rather than take a mildly contested layup, added one extra pass like a seasoned veteran that Wiggins slammed with two hands. By the time White was fouled in transition and made the second of two free throws with 1.4 seconds left on the clock, the Jayhawks had built their huge halftime advantage. Kansas wound up shooting 69 per cent from the field over the opening 20 minutes, had a 23-11 advantage on the boards and outscored the smaller Tigers 26-10 in the paint. Towson shot 20.7 per cent from the field and missed all 10 of its 3-point tries. The Jayhawks didnt slow down much in the second half, racing up and down the court like it was a YMCA pickup game. Black had another big dunk during one stretch, Frankamp curled in a 3 and Kansas coasted to its 66th consecutive non-conference win at Allen Fieldhouse. The Jayhawks wont return to the friendly confines of the Phog for close to a month. After the Bahamas, they visit Colorado and Florida along with playing New Mexico at Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo. They return home to play Georgetown on Dec. 21. "I think potentially we could be one of the better teams, no question," Self said. "I think by the end if our young kids get better, we have a chance to be in the conversation. ... Theres a lot of nice teams out there but certainly when we play with energy we can be one of the better ones." ' ' '