I definitely understand what you mean, you could probably put down 50% of my staunch Wengerism to the fact that he would drop quotes like “I like a famous line from a great philosopher who said, ‘The only way to deal with death is to transform everything that precedes it into art,’” in press conferences, and as a football playing student who was interested in the intellectual side of things as well as the sport, playing with people who weren’t at all interested in the former and who would think you were mispronouncing a part of the female anatomy if you mentioned Kant, I identified hugely with him (for the rest of the Maxi_Gooner style tribute, see…ah, nevermind, it’s a waste of all of our time).
The difference I see is that Guardiola is clearly being used by the separatists. There’s nothing really cool about that for me, especially when the use goes to malicious causes. I don’t think you can ever say Wenger has been used by any particular political movement, the worst he’s done is make his own kind of football politics and put it to the detriment of club, but at least that negative effects are just confined to the arbitrary world of football, and even then, his overall ideas are benevolent/positive for football itself, if impractical/ill-formed/applied, and anyways, his overall effect on Arsenal is probably positive despite the incredibly negative effects over the last 5 years at least and perhaps more.
I also don’t like his showmanship. It goes hand in hand with the incredible passion that makes him such a brilliant manager and so good at transmitting his ideas to footballers and having them successfully carry them out, so it’s partly forgivable, but in the idealistic sense I prefer the class of Wenger, even if he has even lost a bit of that with the years. Indeed, when the Wenger-Guardiola debate came up on the old forum, and I was still a staunch Wengerist, my argument was basically, “I’m not sure I can really think of a reason why Wenger is better, but I prefer his class and trust in the intelligence he shows with his words.”