Poor lines of communication between manager and club brought a prompt end to the Arsenal career of Bruce Rioch after only one season in the job. That is the damning verdict of Highbury chairman Peter Hill Wood, who is expected to reveal former Monaco coach Arsene Wenger as the new Gunners manager in the next few days. "He hardly talked to us," said Hill Wood. "We did not know what was going on or what his thoughts were and that is not healthy. "We employed him in good faith and thought he was the right man for the job. He was not and now we are looking again," said the Arsenal supremo in today's Sun. Club chairman Peter Hill Wood explained Rioch's sacking,
blaming a lack of communication between the manager and the board. He said Arsenal had made a mistake in appointing him, but were not too big to admit it.
Hill Wood added: ``It is a shame in many ways it came to that, but in the interests of the club, we felt it had to be done. ``Although he never complained directly to me, it seems he was unhappy with our policy of the board running the club and trying to make the signings he wanted. The trouble is you can't sign top players if their clubs don't want to sell them.''
Wenger, if his appointment is confirmed, will come in under the same terms as Rioch -- with Dein and (director Ken) Friar still responsible for wheeling and dealing in the transfer market.
Despite the signing of Dennis Bergkamp and David Platt for a combined total of £12.25million last summer, Rioch's only summer signing this year was the acquisition of former Highbury goalkeeper John Lukic on a free transfer from Leeds. That appears to have unnerved the Arsenal board, especially as the Gunners' Premiership rivals were in the process of breaking the bank in a record close-season in the transfer market.
While Newcastle were beating Manchester United to the £15million signing of Alan Shearer, Arsenal's expected interest in the England striker failed to surface. But Rioch said in the Daily Mirror: "I don't know whether Arsenal football club would have paid as much as £15million for the transfer fee -- but I doubt it."
ARSENAL are expected to turn their attention to Arsene Wenger, of France, after Johan Cruyff last night insisted that he would not be moving to Highbury. Cruyff's financial demands - he earned £1.2 million a year at Barcelona - and an impending court case with his former employers have been the obstacles to his appointment as successor to Bruce Rioch, who was sacked on Monday.
Cruyff, claiming wrongful dismissal, is demanding Barcelona pay out the remaining year of his contract. The case will be heard early next month. Wenger, manager of Nagoya Grampus Eight in Japan, has at least another month of his contract to serve so Arsenal are expected to name Stewart Houston and Pat Rice as caretaker managers. It is also understood that Wenger has highlighted several players he wants to sign, including the French 20-year-old A C Milan striker, Patrick Vieira.
David Dein, the Arsenal vice-chairman, has always been a great admirer of Wenger. The Frenchman speaks fluent English and has often been seen at Highbury. He is apparently more than happy to be a continental-style coach and leave the details of the transfer negotiations to Dein and managing director Ken Friar.
Meanwhile, Rioch is believed to have agreed compensation to cover the remaining three years of his contract, worth a total of about £500,000.
Well chaps, it looks like the race is hotting up between two front-runners of Arsene (nice name) Wenger and Johann Cruyff and the betting money seems to be falling the way of Wenger.... Brady, Robson, Adams, Charlton, and even O'leary seem to have seriously lengthening odds
FRENCHMAN Arsene Wenger is clear favourite to take over as the new manager of Arsenal. The 47-year-old former Monaco coach, currently managing Japanese club Grampus Eight, where Gary Lineker finished his career, is the man Arsenal want to replace Bruce Rioch.
I understand he has already been sounded out about taking over and has agreed. Indeed, Wenger has gone so far as to recommend players for the club to buy in preparation for his arrival. Other big names figured prominently in speculation as soon as Rioch was told last night he was being released in the "long-term best interests of the club". Johan Cruyff, Terry Venables and even former Arsenal manager George Graham are all reported to be candidates, but Wenger is top of the list. He has a reputation for being one of the most knowledgeable men in the game and played a significant part in moulding the ideas of Glenn Hoddle when the new England coach was a Monaco player. Hoddle wanted to give Wenger the role of Football Association Technical Director earlier this summer. Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein reportedly wanted Wenger before the job went to Rioch a year ago. Now it appears he wants him again, but Wenger will not be able to move in at Highbury until the Japanese J-League ends in a month's time.
Rioch's departure, reported in late editions of yesterday's Evening Standard, came suddenly but with hindsight was hardly a major surprise given the troubled 14 months he spent at Highbury. Despite leading Arsenal into Europe with a place in the UEFA Cup after finishing fifth in the Premiership last season, Rioch, 49, never appeared happy or comfortable with his terms of employment. Following Graham's dismissal, Arsenal embarked on a policy of dealing with all transfer market activity at board level. Dein and managing director Ken Friar were given the responsibility of actually making new signings, with Rioch's role confined to merely suggesting the players he wanted.
Arsenal meanwhile, have yet to win any of their pre-season friendly matches, losing at Birmingham, Celtic and Rangers, suffering defeats by Fiorentina and Benfica in 45-minute matches in Italy last week, and managing only a 1-1 draw with First Division Ipswich Town at Portman Road on Saturday.
Assistant manager Stewart Houston, who was temporarily in charge before Rioch's appointment and led the club in last year's European Cup Winners' Cup final defeat by Real Zaragoza, is back at the helm along with ex-youth team boss Pat Rice for tonight's final warm-up game at Third Division Northampton. The pair look likely to remain in control for Saturday's Premiership opener at home to West Ham.
JOHAN CRUYFF, tipped by all today's national newspapers as Arsenal's next manager, is wanted by Dutch club Feyenoord. The current manager, Arie Haan, is fighting to stay in the job and if Feyenoord decide to sack him, they will move for Cruyff.
Cruyff, the former Dutch World Cup star who was dismissed by Spanish club Barcelona last season, was in London at the weekend to see his 22-year-old son Jordi make his debut for Manchester United in the Charity Shield against Newcastle. But suggestions that he had stayed on in the capital are wrong. In fact, he was in the Dutch city of Gouda at a sports shoe fair yesterday. However, in his native Holland, Cruyff's name has been linked with the vacant job at Highbury. Dutch journalist Jan Herman Den Bruijn, editor of top Dutch soccer magazine, Elf, said today: "I don't think he would be interested in many other jobs in England. "Perhaps not even a club like Newcastle could tempt him but to work in London, especially with Ruud Gullit in close proximity at Chelsea, that could tempt him."
After Arsenal sacked George Graham, the most successful manager in their history, following the 'bung' scandal 16 months ago, their first choice as replacement was another former England boss, Bobby Robson, then with FC Porto in Portugal. But he became Cruyff's successor at Barcelona.
Former Monaco coach Arsene Wenger is favorite to succeed Bruce Rioch as Arsenal manager, according to the London Evening Standard. Most of the attention on Rioch's likely successor has been focussed on ex-Barcelona coach Johan Cruyff, but the Evening Standard claims Wenger -- currently coach of Japan's Nagoya Grampus Eight -- is the man the Higbury board wants.
The reports says he has been ``sounded out'' about the job and has agreed to accept it, and ``has gone so far as to recommend players for the club to buy in preparation for his arrival.'' Wenger, 47, is considered by many as one of the most astute coaches in the game and is England coach Glenn Hoddle's recommendation to take the post of English football's Technical Director.
Rioch's 14-month tenure -- the shortest of the club's 18 managers -- was brought to an end yesterday by the Arsenal Board, which claimed it made the decision in the ``best long-term interests of the club.''
At Highbury it was the inglorious 12th of August. When the Arsenal guns fired on Bruce Rioch in the afternoon, just five days before the start of the season, a club statement gave every indication that a successor was already in its sights. The new man had been "identified," to use the quaint Arsenal expression; he will be named shortly, and meanwhile, in a club that cannot live with stagnation, speculation is rife.
Four names were immediately linked to Arsenal -- Johan Cruyff, dismissed himself as coach of Barcelona at the beginning of this summer, and George Graham, who has been tending his north London garden since being sacked by Arsenal and banned from management for accepting transfer "bungs" while in their employ. Then came Terry Venables, who has unfinished High Court business with Arsenal's neighbors, Tottenham Hotspur, and who until Monday morning appeared to be in the market for a job, but then took control of Portsmouth as their director of coaching. Fourth, and by no means least plausible, was the name of David O'Leary, who played with distinction a record number of times for Arsenal.
There is, apparently, very little time to speculate. The brief statement issued from the Marble Halls evening was that Rioch was "released" from a contract that had two years, and very probably half a million pounds, to run, but that Stewart Houston would, for the second time in 18 months, be caretaker manager, together with Pat Rice.
On the steps of Highbury later in the evening, the few supporters who gathered were of two minds. Some identified with Graham, whose pragmatic reign had delivered the club six trophies, in England and Europe, in eight years. He has now served his time for his misdemeanor. He is, to put it mildly, available, and one Arsenal supporter spoke for others when he said: "Whatever he done is peanuts compared to what he's given us."
More rational supporters would have nothing of it. Part of Rioch's failing, they argue, was his inability to clear up the legacy of mis-spending in Graham's last months, alluding to 6.2 million spent on the panic purchases of Glen Helder, Chris Kiwomya and John Hartson.
Those same anti-Graham cheerleaders add that the former manager had left Rioch a defense steeped with age, one almost arthritic compared to the intimidating rearguard on which Graham's success was cast.
So if not the old manager returning, who? Cruyff, without doubt, would represent the big name that a club still regarded worldwide as one of the biggest in the game, desires. He was in London over the weekend, ostensibly as a proud father, watching with this wife the first footings of his son, Jordi, for Manchester United. It would be strange if Cruyff Sr, having overseen the cut-price transfer of his own son from Barcelona to United, would, in the space of a week, take over a rival English club, one in which Jordi Cruyff might well have made a fitting partnership with the 7.5 million Dennis Bergkamp, the one truly successful signing under the Rioch regime.
But Cruyff would ask searching questions of Arsenal. An anglophile, and a man who has known English habits intimately for a quarter of a century, Cruyff would know both his own worth and Arsenal's immense standing in the global game. He would ask, surely, a million-pound salary, and, if he were properly briefed, he might want to know where the real power lies at Highbury.
David Dein, the Arsenal vice-chairman, has been presumed to be the power at the club. He was the chief shareholder by far, with 23,816 shares to club chairman Peter Hill-Wood's 448 a year ago, but shares have reportedly been changing hands, with Danny Fiszman, a director since 1992, purchasing shares steadily from Dein so that he now appears to own more than Dein or anyone else on the board.
Fiszman and Graham were close. With Graham polarizing the 38,000 Arsenal supporters, with Venables supposedly tied up at Portsmouth, and with O'Leary a worthy candidate but totally inexperience in management, the "identified" successor appears likely to be Cruyff.
He, too, can be pragmatic. Not in the football sense, where his fault -- if there is one -- is in the insistence on attacking play, but in his singular determination to brook no interference in playing matters. Rioch's resistance, such as it was, was that of a principled man who had withheld his signature on the contract until this very month, and whose attempts to rebuild Arsenal had caused friction between him and Dein.
The continental system of a coach advising the board of players he wanted had apparently seen the passage of 20 names from Rioch to Dein, without success. It was so well known on the grapevine that the bookmaker, William Hill, had drastically reduced their odds on Rioch being sacked, from 7-1 last Thursday to 3-1 on Friday, and had then started to refuse bets.
Time was when Arsenal employed just three managers in 31 years, and the only way out for two of those, Herbert Chapman and Tom Whittaker, was to die in service. Rioch goes in his comparative prime, and he will remember his words when he agreed a three-year tenure on June 8 last year: "Nobody asks for time in this game, I most certainly can't ask for time."
Arsenal could be set to make a stunning move for Johan Cruyff as their new manager after Bruce Rioch was sacked this afternoon, reports the Press Association.
Former Dutch World Cup star Cruyff, dismissed by Spanish giants Barcelona last season, was in London at the weekend to see his 22-year-old son Jordi make his debut for Manchester United in the Charity Shield against Newcastle. Just minutes after ``releasing'' Rioch today, Arsenal managing director Ken Friar revealed that the Gunners had already identified a successor and that chairman Peter Hill Wood would be announcing the new appointment ``when he is in a position to do so''.
Initial speculation surrounded former England coach Terry Venables who has many admirers at Highbury, but any such move for him now looks too late. Venables who quit as national boss at the end of Euro 96 and who has been consistently linked with Arsenal, even during Rioch's short reign, today made a commitment to first division Portsmouth where he is to become general manager, working with Terry Fenwick.
Although Friar said the new Arsenal manager will be announced shortly, it is, in fact, not likely to be before the start of the season.
If Cruyff is the top name on Arsenal's list there is sure to be some heavy negotiation to take place, even though the Dutchman has had friendly relations with Highbury for many years and once played in a testimonial match there.
Ironically, after Arsenal sacked George Graham, the most successful manager in their history, following the notorious ``transfer bung'' scandal 16 months ago, their first choice as replacement was another former England boss, Bobby Robson, then with FC Porto in Portugal but now Cruyff's successor at Barcelona. Arsenal turned to ex-Bolton manager Rioch after Porto put the block on Robson's proposed move to North London. Rioch's sacking came suddenly at 1400 this afternoon, but was hardly a major surprise given the troubled 14 months he spent at Highbury. He started with two major signings - Dutch striker Dennis Bergkamp from Inter Milan and England skipper David Platt from Sampdoria - costing a combined 12.25 million pounds. But no other signings have since taken place and it was also revealed midway through last season that Rioch had not still signed the four-year contract he was presented with at Highbury on June 8 last year. Rioch finally announced last month that he had signed a deal, but pointed out at the time that it had not yet been countersigned by anybody at Arsenal.
Despite leading Arsenal into Europe with a place in the UEFA Cup after finishing fifth in the Premiership last season, Rioch, 49, never appeared happy or comfortable with his terms of employment. Following Graham's dismissal, Arsenal embarked on a policy of dealing with all transfer market activity at board level. Vice-chairman David Dein and managing director Friar were given the responsibility of actually making new signings, with Rioch's role confined to merely suggesting the players he wanted. Rioch, the former Bolton, Middlesbrough and Millwall manager, insists he bombarded Dein and Friar with a long list of wanted-men but ``for one reason or another'' no signings were made.
Arsenal have been in pre-season turmoil, with suggestions that the signings of Bergkamp and Platt are still the subject of an Inland Revenue inquiry.
And it was recently reported that Dein had sold thousands of his shares in the club to wealthy Hatton Garden diamond merchant and fellow Board member Daniel Fiszman.
Arsenal meanwhile, have yet to win any of their pre-season friendly matches, losing at Birmingham, Celtic and Rangers, suffering defeats by Fiorentina and Benfica in 45-minute matches in Italy last week, and managing only a 1-1 draw with first division Ipswich Town on Saturday.
Assistant manager Stewart Houston and ex-youth team boss Pat Rice have been put in charge for tomorrow's final warm-up game at third division Northampton and look likely to remain in control for Saturday's Premiership opener at home to West Ham. There will no doubt be mixed feelings among the Arsenal players about Rioch's departure. Star striker Ian Wright asked for a transfer last season - it was subsequently withdrawn - after much-publicized clashes with the former Scotland captain. But skipper Tony Adams admitted today: ``I'm sad for Bruce.'' Adams, who will miss the start of the season after more surgery on the knee injury which kept him out for much of last term and then flared again during Euro 96, told Arsenal Clubcall: ``I had a year with him here and have to say he was fabulous to me. ``I wish him every success in whatever he does now, but the fact is I'm an employee of this club and have to believe that the board have acted in the best interests of the club. We've just got to get on with it now and go forward.''
British bookmakers William Hill started paying out 10,000 pounds ($15,500) on Monday to punters who correctly predicted Bruce Rioch would part company with premier league club Arsenal at odds ranging from 7-1 to 7-4. "Clearly there are betting people out there who have known this was on the cards for a week," spokesman Graham Sharpe said.
"We closed the book on Rioch leaving Highbury at the weekend when punters began trying to place bets of 1,000 pounds ($1,550) with us, at which point we suspected that drastic moves were afoot." He said the largest single bet taken was 600 pounds ($930) at 7-4. Several other three-figure bets were also placed. Hill's said they had no plans to re-open a book on who will succeed Rioch, who took over at Arsenal in 1995 after former manager George Graham left in disgrace following transfer irregularities.
"It's a case of once bitten, twice shy, although we are prepared to offer 10-1 about George Graham returning," Sharpe said.
Hill's quoted Arsenal, who won the English league championship in 1989 and 1991 and finished fifth last season, at 14-1 to win the league title.
Arsenal today announced that Bruce Rioch has been released as manager of the club, reports the Press Association.
In a statement from Highbury, the club said: ``The Board have decided that it was in the best long-term interest of the club that Mr Rioch should now leave.''
Rioch took over at the north London club last summer, after taking Bolton into the Premiership through the play-offs. He broke the Arsenal transfer record by signing Dutch international Dennis Bergkamp for 7.5 million pounds from Inter Milan and also signed former England captain David Platt from Sampdoria for 4.75 million pounds.
Arsenal added that they expect to name Rioch's successor shortly. In the meantime, assistant manager Stewart Houston and coach Pat Rice will be in control of team affairs, with only four days to go to the start of the new Premiership season.
Rioch took over at the north London club last summer after taking Bolton into the Premiership through the playoffs. But Rioch, who worked throughout last season without a contract, has not added to the Gunners' squad this summer. He has had an uneasy relationship with the club's board but appeared to have settled his differences with them when he signed a contract last week.
Rioch, whose managerial reign at Highbury is the shortest since the war, was only the 18th manager in the club's history lasted only 13 months.
Recent appointment Liam Brady, who is now the Gunners' head of youth development, will continue in his role, said the statement.
