Barney Stone

“This is where the music starts to slow. Because, let’s face it, the fact remains that in two decades since his arrival Wenger has had a greater, more visible – albeit rather tenuous – influence on Germany’s world champions than he has on the current England team. Despite being the only long-serving Premier League-era manager with any real sway or heft in the wider world – coach of five of France’s world champions in 1998 – he will leave no real mark on English football development or theory. Rather than cherished, brain selectively picked, Wenger is instead quietly mocked these days, cast as a cobwebbed crank, some doomed, sad stone knight still tending the hearth, a little creaky and mad, friends only with the flies and the beetles and the spiders.””

“You can't really be too concerned with what people think of you. You're on your own adventure of growth and discovery. Like Charles Bukowski said, 'People think I'm down on Fifth and Main at the Blarney Stone, but really I'm on top floor of the health club with a towel in my lap, watching Johnny Carson.' So it's not always good to be where people think you are, especially if you subscribe to it as well ... which is easily done, because then you don't have to figure out who you are, you just ask somebody else.””

“The thing about stone is you don't get to the heart of it. It stares back into you, its secret intact and inviolable.””