Arsene Wenger's only 4 World Class Players at Arsenal

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The Arsenal manager has trained only four truly world class players in his time in London.

The debate has raged in recent weeks after Manchester United's longest serving manager, Sir Alex Ferguson claimed to have only managed four players who can unequivocally be rated as world class, In that group was Eric Cantona, Paul Scholes, and Cristiano Ronaldo. Missing on his list were the likes of Rooney, Ferdinand, David Bechkam, Roy Keane and Van Der Saar, some of whom were considered the finest players of their generation.

Thus a soul-searching was initiated to take a closer look at the talents that the Gunners' longest serving manager have had to work with. 

While the criteria with which Sir Alex based his categorization is not readily available to me, I figured I could judge based on three factors
  1. The player that could walk straight into another top club's first team and improve it.
  2. Consistent performance of a long period of time.
  3. Trophy winning impact at Arsenal.
Factor 3 easily narrowed the field for me by making sure that despite their undoubted talents, the likes of Fabregas, Van Persie, Arshavin and of course Lord Bendtner didn't make the cut. 

Still on factor 3 however, I was almost tempted to raise every member of the class of 'Invincibles' to world class status but then factor 2 suggests that their performance should be measured over more than a season exploits. 

Nevertheless, factor 1 is the trickiest has it is hard to argue that the likes of Robert Pires, Kolo Toure, Ljunberg, Overmas, Emmanuel Petit or Anelka would not improve say Barcelona or Manchester United of that era. 

I intentionally left out Tony Adams and Dennis Bergkamp has Wenger had no hand in their move to Arsenal. 

Arsene's 4 Truly World Class Players
  1. Patrick Vieira: Wenger's best central midfielder for the best part of a decade, Vieira the Londoner's answer to Ferguson's Scholes. 
  2. Ashley Cole: Easily the best full back England produced in decades. 
  3. Sol Campbell: Only Sir Alex knows why he excluded a defender has accomplished as Rio Ferdinand from his list but it would be difficult to find a better defensive signing than Campbell that Wenger made. 
  4. Thierry Henry: You don't score that many goals, terrorize that many defenders and win that many trophies if you are not World Class!

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