‘You’ll see a new Arsenal, a new way’

When David O’Leary was just one year into his record-breaking career with us, Bertie Mee’s decade in charge came to an end. 

Our 1971 Double-winning manager was replaced by Terry Neill - the second of four full-time managers O’Leary played under during his 18 years with us. 

This summer brings the first ‘new chapter’ since 1996, so how significantly different can we expect the post-Arsène Wenger era to be?

“Alex Ferguson left Manchester United and Arsene Wenger’s left here - you will never see that again and you’ll never see two people like that be in so much power of the football club,” O’Leary told Arsenal.com. “I think you will see a new Arsenal, a new way and we’ve already seen that Arsène Wenger was the manager and Unai Emery is not the manager, he’s the coach. 

“So there’s already a new change of ways and a new way of doing things. If a load of people have been at a place for 22 years, whoever comes in after 22 years, there is going to be a change because people get so used to a certain way of doing things for so long. So there will be new staff coming in and only time will tell.

“I hope that they will be successful and I’m sure he [Emery] will have a lot of new ideas and new ways of doing things. It’s whether the players that he inherits jump to that or they’ve got so used to another way of doing things. 

“That will be a big thing as well to decide. I hope the players there will think ‘Great, new bunch of ideas. Yes, we like these ideas’ and the club goes forward from there.”