Wenger’s statue at the Emirates Stadium: it seems to be happening

 

 

Statue of Wenger at the Emirates

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We don’t normally run stories on both Untold Arsenal and the Arsenal History Society website, but today is an exception because it appears that a plan we put to Arsenal back in 2010 is now coming to fruition with the erecting of a statue to Arsene Wenger.

I have mentioned a number of times before that the idea of statues around the Emirates Stadium was set out in a meeting between three committee members of Arsenal Independent Supporters Association and Ivan Gazidis.

At a meeting held on 23 July 2010 the plan for the statues was sketched out and an initial set of proposals was put forward.  One of those statues that we proposed was Arsene Wenger, but although the club accepted the idea of the statues, and indeed had a Herbert Chapman statue designed exactly to our specification, the Wenger statue was rejected, on the grounds that he was still at the club at the time.

However on the 13th anniversary of the meeting it became clear that a Wenger statue was in production, and it seems that the statue is being erected even as I write this.

I am hoping we will shortly have some pictures of the statue.

In the meanwhile you can read more about the original proposals for the statues here.

As we have noted before the idea for the statues was not only to commemorate people involved in the club, but also to relieve some of the congestion around the ground before the game.  The idea was that people would stop saying “I will meet you at entrance 21” or whatever but would say “I’ll meet you at Tony Adams” etc, and indeed this is what subsequently happened.  The number of people milling around the entrances declined considerably making the queuing to get into the ground a lot easier.

More details are available on the Arsenal History Society site.