Former Arsenal winger Jermaine Pennant says Arsène Wenger was the most influential manager of his career.

The now 34-year-old joined Arsenal as a 15-year-old, costing the Gunners £2m. Although it never worked out for Pennant, he did have a lot of praise for the Arsenal manager. He told the Guardian: “Of all the managers I played under, Arsène had the most influence. That’s where I learned my tricks of the trade – through Arsène.

“But he never quite gave me the opportunity. That was frustrating but Arsène is very strict and if your attitude is not right he won’t give you that chance.

“At the same time that was half the reason why my attitude wasn’t always right. I was spot-on for months. I was playing well for the reserves but it was like he’d lost faith in me. It seemed as if no matter what I did I wouldn’t get that chance.”

Wenger has had a positive influence on a very large number of careers, but it does seem to be true that once he loses faith in you, it never really comes back. Players like Lukas Podolski, Joel Campbell and most recently Lucas Perez all seemed to fall out of favour at some point and never managed to turn things round.

For Pennant, he started to believe that maybe his fortunes were changing once he did get a league start, against Southampton in 2003. The league title had been lost, and with two games to go, the winger was given his chance to impress, which he felt he took

“You remember that game where I scored the hat-trick for Arsenal? The 6-1 win against Southampton? That was my first-ever [league] start for Arsenal, it was great.

“After the hat-trick I was on the bench the next game [a 4-0 win at Sunderland to finish the 2002-03 season]. I thought that was the start of it and I would just kick on at Arsenal. But it never happened and I got more and more frustrated and lost interest. I thought: ‘This is going nowhere.’”

So, much as Pennant was clearly grateful for the part that Wenger played in making him a better player, he also seems to look back on his time with the Gunners with a sense of what could’ve been different.

Arsenal at the time had one of their greatest ever sides, the Invincibles. Which was likely the main problem. Promising as Pennant may have been, there was no displacing Robert Pires or Freddie Ljungberg. You’d have to believe that no manager in the world would’ve dropped those two for an unproven youngster.