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Arsène Wenger will become Arsenal’s longest-serving manager on Thursday and he still believes that the club were brave, if not crazy, to appoint him.

“Arsène Who?” to one newspaper when he took over at Highbury on October 1, 1996, the Frenchman will pass the record held by George Allison, who was at the helm from June 1, 1934 to May 31, 1947. In his 13 years in charge, Wenger has delivered two Doubles, taken the club to a European Cup final and masterminded an unbeaten league campaign, not to mention transforming the culture of the club.

As he pointed out, his tenure has spanned a time of great change in the game. “At that time, to do what Arsenal did, you needed to be a little bit crazy, in the sense that I had no name, I was foreign, there was no history,” he said. “Maybe not crazy, but brave.

“It is difficult to put into context, because today when every foreign manager comes in, there is a red carpet. It was not like that when I arrived [after a successful 18 months in Japan in charge of Nagoya Grampus Eight]. There was a history and belief in England that the foreign manager could not be successful. Now you have a different feeling. Now you think only foreign managers can be successful. That is wrong as well.”

Wenger, of course, has been at least partly responsible for the change in perceptions.

“That can sound pretentious but I don’t think it is at all,” he said. “I can show you some articles where people tried to prove that the foreign managers can never win an English championship. That has changed and I have certainly contributed to that. But I am also one of the few who also defends English managers.”

His first match was away to Blackburn Rovers — “goals from Ian Wright and Paul Merson,” he recalled — who are also Arsenal’s opponents at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday. Since then there have been highs and lows, the highest easy to pick out. “To play a whole season unbeaten,” he said.

“No matter how much money anybody else has invested, nobody else has done that. Losing the semi-final of the Champions League last year [to Manchester United] was the lowest point because we didn’t play at our level.”

Wenger could have become Arsenal manager a year earlier. He was interviewed, but Bruce Rioch was deemed a better bet to handle characters such as Merson, Wright and Tony Adams. “Maybe he was a better candidate than I was at the time,” Wenger said.

“But I had a fantastic time in Japan and I decided to only come back to Europe for a big club.”

He has no regrets about his decision to return. “There were some things that I didn’t enjoy here but I always feel you have to accept that in our job,” he said. “You cannot not want to be a public man or not be criticised.

“The most important thing for me is that there is a passion here in this country that nowhere else in the world has. It is a privilege for me to work in an environment like that.”

However, Wenger was curiously noncommital about his future with Arsenal. “The long-term future becomes shorter and shorter for me,” he joked. “I want to focus on this season. We have waited three or four seasons for this team to mature. I’m convinced that we’re on the right way with the team but it’s important to show we can fight for the championship.”

The fight to banish memories of last season’s disappointment in the Champions League continues against Olympiacos in tonight’s second group game at the Emirates Stadium, but Arsenal will be without Denilson, who will miss up to two months with a stress fracture of the back, Theo Walcott and Nicklas Bendtner, who was lucky to walk away when his car left the A1 and crashed into a tree on Sunday morning. The 21-year-old Denmark forward was checked by paramedics at the scene and later by a club doctor.

“Fortunately there was no real long-term damage, but he was bruised and we thought it better he did not train,” Wenger said. “He should be back for Sunday’s game.”