Woodward can succeed as manager - Wenger
Arsene Wenger insisted that Clive Woodward could be a success if he replaced Harry Redknapp as Southampton boss – but only if he surrounded himself with a strong coaching team.
Wenger believes the former England rugby union coach, who is Southampton’s performance director, would not be able to take the same hands-on approach as someone with a more developed footballing pedigree.
However, he sees no reason why he should not be considered as a potential successor to Redknapp if a compensation deal can be agreed to allow Redknapp to return to Portsmouth.
Wenger declared: “There are so many different ways to envisage this job. You can be a manager without being a specialist.
“That is not the way that I see the job, but if he’s surrounded by football people who do the training sessions and decide what they do and how they work on a daily basis, then why not?
“It depends what you really feel his job would be. If he wanted to practice with the strikers and midfielders, he would have a big problem.
“It would be like me going to rugby and practising with the players, I would have a problem. But if he took specialists, it could work. If he chose the right people around him, he would have a chance.
“Players respect those who make them improve, make then win and go forward. If he can convince them he has the right team around him and wins games, then you gain respect with results and the quality of your work.”
It remains to be seen whether Redknapp does leave St Mary’s and whether Woodward, whose preparation of the England rugby team was meticulous, would then have any involvement with the Southampton first team squad.
However, while Wenger joked that “he’s a Chelsea fan, that’s bad news“, he believes there is little that Woodward can actually bring in terms of sports science to the top levels of football.
“There is a lot of science in the game now. There’s not much room to improve. Between 0 and 12, there is still scope to improve a player but, after 20, if players don’t have the basic technique then forget it,” he added.
“The guy who makes a bad pass at 20 will still make a bad pass at 40. When I started at the academy in Strasbourg, I worked with 18-year-olds for a year and I thought that I must be useless as they were no better.
“But we had a coaching meeting after six months and when I asked how I could improve my players, there was relief all around as everyone had the same problem! At 18, it is already too late.”
