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LONDON -- There was a time when Arsene Wenger played the role of the slick, vibrant, bold, fresh-thinking foreign coach in the Premier League, winning a league and FA Cup double in his first full season as Arsenal manager and leaving his rivals trailing in his wake.
Wenger was 48 at the time, so hardly a coaching novice, but by guiding Arsenal to the Double in 1998, he injected English football with something new and set the club on course for almost a decade at the top, jostling with Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United in a two-way battle for supremacy.