Since the 2005-06 Champions League final defeat to the then European king Barcelona, Thierry Henry, Vieira, Bergkamp, Pire and other stars who have helped the team create countless glory have left one after another, Arsenal is no longer a giant team in the strict sense.

Both their record and their attraction to their stars have been left far behind by many teams. Every year, he is nicknamed the "Crazy Demon for the Four" by fans, and after barely participating in the Champions League, he also stopped outside the quarterfinals again and again, and successfully took over the title of Real Madrid's "Dream Eight" ten years ago.

However, with Manchester City and Chelsea still solid, Manchester United and Liverpool gradually regaining their former strength, and Tottenham and other new forces rising strongly, the Gunners have not even been able to retain the fourth place in the Premier League.

But the reality is far from the theory, even if everyone is always complaining about Arsenal's downfall, but the mind has always been tacit that it is still a strong team to be reckoned with in European football, for the simple reason that the man sitting in the dugout of Highbury and later the home team of the Emirates Stadium is an old Frenchman named Arsène Wenger.

In his 22 years as Gunners manager, he helped the north London club win three top-flight titles, seven FA Cups (the most by any coach in history), two League Cup runners-up and one Champions League runners-up, and the first unbeaten Premier League title in Premier League history, while also breaking the English top-flight unbeaten record. These accolades all show how strong the team, nicknamed Arsenal, was once under the leadership of the professor.

Before he landed in the British Isles, the veteran English manager would only arrange the squad based on a scouting report of the opponent obtained before the game, and there was basically no detail in terms of tactical research, which was as rough as a whole wheat bread that had been shelved for two nights.

It was the man who was considered at the time a "pedant who didn't understand football" (British media slang) that gave the British, who had been decadent and old for hundreds of years, an opportunity to change, and he brought a new dynamism, technical tactical thinking and modern training to the Premier League, which had been unable to achieve European glory for many years. It would be an exaggeration to say that the professor and Sir Alex Ferguson helped the English league to restart a new era of modern football, and I don't think it would be too much to call them the pioneers of this era.

In the past 22 years, Arsene Wenger has imprinted himself on every inch of the Arsenal club, and apart from the very old fans, not many people will remember that before he took over the Gunners' coaching, this team has been galloping on the pitch with a strong style of play and a tough style of play under the leadership of another foreign coach George Graham. Although that team has won many accolades in the league, FA Cup, League Cup, European Cup Winners' Cup and many others, the first impression that pops up in the minds of current fans when they think of Arsenal is that of the attacking technical school of tactics, and this is the unique label that the professor has given to the team.

If Arsenal is Arsene Wenger's team, I don't think there will be many people who will object, the two are already inseparable as a whole, so Li Mudi was so shocked by the news that the meritorious coach took the initiative to leave. However, after hearing what happened to the other party, the Turin coach understood the old man's helplessness.

Although there have always been calls for him to leave class because of the team's sluggish results, it is not too loud, and it is not until this year, when it is very likely that he will not qualify for the Champions League, that fans begin to turn against him on a large scale. However, if the club's top management can still give full support, Wenger, who has always been unable to give up on football and the team, will not make the choice to leave, but unfortunately the situation has not developed in the direction of a fairy tale.

The Kroenke family, one of the world's top sports companies in the United States, became the new owners of the European giants after successfully acquiring a 63% stake in Arsenal in 2011 to gain absolute control of the club, while the Gunners' fiscal austerity policy was continued.

Although Arsene Wenger had no transfer funds for five or six seasons to renew the squad due to the debt to build the Emirates Stadium, after gritting his teeth and persevering, in fact, the Gunners' financial pressure after entering 2010 was not as great as before, but the momentum of the original opportunity to revive was unfortunately missed due to the arrival of the new owner of the club.

The Kroenke family, which also owns the NBA's Denver Nuggets basketball team, the NHL's Colorado Avalanche hockey team, and the NFL's St. Louis Rams football team, has always used a long-term investment approach to team management, and they like to hire senior managers such as presidents and managers to professionalize the management of the team and give them maximum autonomy in decision-making. But the long-term approach to business also dooms them to not invest as heavily as Abu and Mansour, and the Kroenke family's ability to develop Arsenal's commercial value is far less than that of the Glazer family, which is the most fundamental reason for the Gunners' collapse in recent seasons, and the manager is just to blame.

However, the fans will not understand the professor's distress, they just put all the blame for the team's unsatisfactory performance on the head of the head coach, which is really unfair. And the management did not even make statements in support of themselves in the outside world at this time, which made Wenger feel a cold chill.

Although he was not willing to leave his beloved coach's seat as a loser, after several exchanges with the club's top management, he has clearly realized that there is no such thing as a feast. In order to avoid a huge humiliation by receiving a dismissal notice from the club at the end of the season, Wenger had no choice but to choose to leave himself as a means of saving face as a last-ditch measure.

Of course, this decision has not yet been made public, but has only been reported to the club after consultation with the family. Previously, some media published an article claiming that if Arsenal can replicate the footsteps of Manchester United last season and return to the Champions League by winning the Europa League title in a "curve to save the country", the club may still choose to renew his contract. But on this day, in a hotel in Nyon, Switzerland, Li Mudi personally received the sad news from the lips of the person concerned: no matter what the Gunners' results in the rest of the season, the team will end a glorious era in about 40 days, and everything has been decided.

However, Wenger made a point to take the time to talk to the Torino boss when he was in a pile of worries, obviously not to complain. Even if he was forced to leave the coaching bench of the Arsenal, as a 100% Gunners supporter, he obviously still can't let go of this team that occupies an important position in his life, hoping to recommend a suitable successor to the club, and Li Mudi, who has a high degree of overlap with him in terms of coaching philosophy and training reserve talents, is the best candidate in his mind.

Although it is clear that the club's hierarchy will not take his personal opinion into account when choosing a new manager, and that it is almost impossible to hire a manager with a similar style when his own philosophy is considered to be unsuitable for Arsenal's modern needs, sometimes the extremely stubborn professor still stubbornly believes that his ideas are the most likely to bring the team back on the rise, so there is a scene where the two men meet separately in private after the draw ceremony.

Faced with the one-on-one inquiry of whether he is willing to become the head coach of Arsenal, Li Mudi, who is already frightened by the chairman of Turin's plan to build a new stadium, will naturally not refuse the proposal to jump to a big team, but both also know that the upcoming summer, the Torino coach basically has no chance.

After parting ways with Arsene Wenger, the Kroenke family must have wanted to hire a new head coach with a well-known reputation and coaching resume, which is not only in line with the club's status in football, but also an inevitable reflection of the club's hierarchy's requirements for team performance.

For quite some time, Stan Kroenke, the leader of the family or consortium, has been emphasizing that they are running the club as a businessman, so in his opinion, as long as Arsenal can reach the Champions League, they can get a lot of money from UEFA for participating in the Champions League, which is considered to be the most basic business need.

As the head coach of the team, Wenger can be regarded as cooperating with his own boss business philosophy, and has been focusing on seams and small transactions in the transfer market, which makes the club's annual financial report always look good, but it is relatively bad in terms of competitive results.

However, in the last season or two, Arsenal have spent more than expected to recruit and retain key players, which has caused alarm among the Kroenke family. In order to keep the German international Mesut Ozil, the team was forced to pay the Real Madrid outcast a huge salary, but they could not keep the determined Sanchez, and the Chilean thigh was determined to escape the Emirates Stadium and also wanted to join the arch-rivals Manchester United, which was very embarrassing for the Gunners.

More importantly, with the decline in the team's results, the attendance of the Emirates Stadium has continued to decline, which has had a huge negative impact on Arsenal's club image and brand. So even if the club owners are no longer willing to invest in adjusting the squad and have to continue to spend a certain amount of euros in order to ensure that they can improve their results next season, considering that the team already has new signings such as Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, presumably the cost will not be too large.

And since people have come up with "blood capital", it is natural that the requirements for the team's performance will be correspondingly high, and the candidates for the new coach will also be the best of the best. Wenger, who was just holding a dead horse as a live horse doctor, still hoped for a miracle, so he actively contacted the Torino coach to see if he could make the other party more fully prepared.

However, after the two of them communicated in a calm state for a while, the professor gave up the plan to use his remaining connections to forcibly recommend Li Mudi to the position, after all, the odds of winning were really outrageously low. But the two sides did not waste time, but had a free discussion about the future development of the two.

Although he lost his 22-year iron job, he is a world-class coach, and Wenger is naturally worried about not finding a home. In fact, since the end of last season, Paris Saint-Germain has expressed their desire for him to become the team's new football director. After a number of seasons in which the team has been on a cash-spree but the team has had a poor performance in the Champions League, the owners of the club like the Qatari consortium are also hoping to change their operational strategy so that the team can make a big breakthrough. Bringing Arsene Wenger to the club as CEO is undoubtedly an important part of their new plans.

At present, Wenger's departure from Arsenal is a foregone conclusion (although the news of the resignation has not yet been obtained by the outside world, but with the connections of the Ligue 1 giants, they are still the first to get this top secret), Grand Paris seems to be considering other possibilities, which means that the possibility of hiring a professor as a manager cannot be ruled out. Of course, according to media reports, it is the former Borussia Dortmund boss who is closer to the Paris manager, and given Arsene Wenger's mastery of the German language, it seems ideal to maintain the plan to keep Wenger in charge of the club's operations and partner Tuchel.

As for Li Mudi's thoughts, he did not hide anything from the other party, because the Torino club's plan to build a new stadium basically cannot be abandoned, so he does not want to repeat Arsenal's financial austerity in the previous years, and has decided to join a new club after the expiration of his current contract next season. If the Gunners' position is still vacant by then, perhaps after two seasons of achievements in Italy, Li Mudi may become one of the candidates for the new manager.

After an hour and a half of communication, the two of them talked about their plans for the future, laying a good foundation for more in-depth exchanges in the future. In the end, the two sides sent each other a wave of poisoned milk, hoping that the two teams could win the Europa League final, and then parted.

This conversation was also mentioned in Wenger's personal memoirs later, because he did a good job of paving the way for some important events that followed, and it also became a beautiful talk for later generations.