Today marks the first anniversary of Glenn Roeder's appointment as Newcastle manager but, as Chief Sports Writer SCOTT WILSON explains, the Londoner is at St James' Park for the long haul

IT is August 1988 and Arsene Wenger, the little-known manager of aspiring French side Monaco, is being urged to make the big-money signing that could catapult his club into the upper echelons of Ligue One.

A succession of agents have visited his office, touting experienced, if ageing, footballers who are desperate to hit the jackpot in the millionaire's playground of Monte Carlo.

Yet Wenger, for all of his managerial inexperience, finds himself recoiling from the mercenaries and journeymen that are offered his way.

Far better, surely, to trust his own judgement, and instead sign the player he has spent the last two years monitoring and courting.

That player is an unknown Liberian by the name of George Weah. Seven years later, Weah is crowned FIFA World Footballer of the Year.

Glenn Roeder retold the story at Newcastle's Benton training ground yesterday on the eve of the first anniversary of his appointment as the club's manager.

Given everything that has happened over the course of the last month, the tale serves as both warning and inspiration.

While Wednesday night's 3-1 win over Aston Villa ensured Roeder's first 12 months in the St James' Park hotseat ended on a high note, the Londoner's failure to make a significant purchase during the January transfer window has led to accusations of reduced ambition.

The loan capture of United States international Oguchi Onyewu is hardly the kind of signing to ignite excitement in a fanbase that has grown accustomed to Freddy Shepherd driven "spectaculars" such as the purchase of Alan Shearer and Michael Owen.

But for Roeder, a manager who has had to earn the respect that was instantly awarded to some of his more illustrious predecessors, the analogy with Wenger is proof that he is on the right track.

Just as Wenger moulded a successful Monaco team around a youthful and initially unknown core, so he has built and re-built his Arsenal side to accommodate dynamic young players he believed in implicitly.

And just as Wenger is trusting in the progress of Theo Walcott, Phillipe Senderos and Gael Clichy, so Roeder would prefer to put his faith in the likes of James Milner, Steven Taylor and perhaps even eventually Onyewu than waste money on expensive and extravagant alternatives.

"If you had to have a blueprint of how to be a manager, a copy of Arsene Wenger's would be mine," said Roeder, as he reflected on a turbulent 12 months that have included a protracted wrangle over coaching qualifications, an injury list that would make most managers despair and a record of 28 wins from 57 matches.

"Arsene has the best recruitment team in the world. You can go right back to when he signed George Weah from Liberia. Glenn Hoddle (who was playing for Monaco at the time) has told me that he came into the dressing room and nobody even knew who George Weah was. Within 20 minutes of seeing him play, though, everyone was saying, 'Who on earth is this boss?'

"That's just one example - you can roll name after name after name off his hit-list of players. They have come into his club with no-one particularly knowing who they are, and within 18 months they are household names.

"I don't have his contacts book, but I can emulate the policy of looking to sign younger players that you think have got improvement in them. Players who, if they come to Newcastle, will at worst hold their value during the time of their stay."

If such a policy seems radical when connected with Newcastle, then it is only because Roeder's rationality stands in marked contrast to the profligacy of some of his predecessors.

Two years ago, the January transfer window saw Graeme Souness spend £11m on the capture of Jean-Alain Boumsong, Celestine Babayaro and Amdy Faye and, for the majority of this month, Roeder has been trying to clear up the mess that was the £9.5m signing of Albert Luque.

Given that the 28-year-old arrived after Souness had been unsuccessful in his pursuit of at least two other targets, Roeder hardly lacks first-hand experience of what an ill-advised panic buy can lead to.

"There has to be some sort of business head put on here," he explained. "There has to be some constructive thinking beyond the short-term planning of, 'Well he'll do OK for 12 months and then be worth nothing'.

"If I was spending money this window, but I really wanted to be spending it on target A, B or C in the summer, I'd be thinking, 'I've used that money and if could get target A in the future, this lad I've just brought here on a three-and-a-half-year contract would be no more than a squad player'.

"I'm working towards a team that, when we send out Newcastle United's first XI, every player has a value in the transfer market. That's not to say we're going to be looking to sell them.

"But it would be nice if every player on the pitch had a decent value and it wasn't a team that was half-full of free transfers because of their age."

While such a sustainable policy is clearly laudable, it is difficult to square with the short-termism that tends to dominate footballing thinking.

The business world might accept that new managerial appointments need time to carve out their own niche, but football fans demand answers instantly, a timeframe that Roeder believes to be unrealistic.

"They say in business that the first two years are the toughest," he explained. "Because you're making sure that the business is still up and running two years on from you joining.

"It's the third and fourth years where you actually expect to see progress from your efforts and gather the fruits of your labour from the first two years.

"This is a results-driven business - I understand that and wouldn't want to hide away from it - but I want to be able to do this my way."

Crucially, Roeder's way also appears to be Shepherd's preferred path. In the past, the chairman has tended to answer his critics by stressing his willingness to support his manager by buying big.

That support still exists - the Newcastle board would have financed a deal for either Peter Crouch or Anton Ferdinand had either Liverpool or West Ham been persuaded to sell last month - but after years of spending exorbitantly, even a serial cheque-writer like Shepherd is coming to regard parsimony as a virtue.

"Glenn has proved he's nobody's fool," said Shepherd. "He could easily have panicked and downgraded his targets, but he held his nerve and that's an admirable quality in a manager.

"Just remember what he's had to deal with this season - the worst injury list in Premier League history. That makes his stance even more admirable.

"He'd rather not buy anyone than buy second best. Without going into too many details about this club's transfer policy, let's just say we're looking to be much more selective in the future."