Former Arsenal midfielder Stewart Robson has claimed that Antonio Conte would be the ideal fit to replace Arsene Wenger as manager, adding that he doesn’t believe Henry is ready to take on the top job.
Thierry Henry threw his hat in for the job this week, saying he would be ‘interested’ in the job, but Stewart Robson claims that he isn’t the right man, and that he doesn’t read the game well enough to take on the role.
“I don’t think Thierry Henry has got the experience,” Robson said. “When I listen to him on TV, I don’t think he reads the game particularly well. He’s getting better on his punditry, but I don’t think he’s the right man for the job at the moment.
“He needs more experience. He needs to go and coach at a lower level. Yes I know he’s coaching the forwards for the Belgium team, but that’s a totally different role to being a head coach. As head coach you’ve got to come up with a game plan, you’ve got to manage the players. You’ve got to do all the jobs that you need to do to be a top-class manager, and I don’t think he has the experience or the know-how to do that at the moment.”
Robson added that Zinedine Zidane’s success despite a lack of experience has to be taken with context, claiming he needed to do very little in his role to maintain themselves.
“Zidane was taking over a team with some of the best players in the world. He didn’t need to change [tactics] or a game plan,” Robson said. “What he’s done is manage very experienced players, and he did it well for two years.
“Now we’re seeing, when they’re struggling, he can’t change it. He hasn’t got a game plan to make them perform better. And that would be the problem with Thierry Henry going to Arsenal. Arsenal need a total revamp of the coaching system.”
The former Gunner moves to name Chelsea’s Antonio Conte as the man who we should target for the role, with the Italian highly speculated to be leaving his job in the near future.
“Conte is a brilliant manager,” Robson said. “When he goes into a football club, and if he went into Arsenal, he’d make sure the players did what he wanted them to do. … They would know exactly what their roles in the side are. And that doesn’t happen at Arsenal at the moment. He’d be a great fit at Arsenal.”
Would Conte be a great successor to Wenger? Could we persuade him to move across London?
Pat J