Wenger has been the epitome of common sense

TIPPING POINT:There is something fundamentally wrong when Arsene Wenger is portrayed as some sort of failure, particularly by those who should know better, writes BRIAN O'CONNOR

MICK CHANNON, the former England football international turned successful racehorse trainer, once got upset at criticism of one of his stable stars, only for the critic to opine that everyone’s got an opinion. To which Channon replied in that unmistakable west-country burr: “Everyone’s got an aaaarsehole too. So what?”

It is one of the illusions fostered by the digital age that every keyboard-jabber’s vomitous outpourings are somehow validated by their entitlement to an opinion. Well, here’s news for you – they’re not. And for anyone about to point out that might be a bit rich coming from this particular keyboard-jabber, then there is one rather crucial distinction. I’m paid to be an “aaaarsehole”.

There is an old theory that suggests it is not the strength of your argument that matters so much as the vehemence with which you push it. The media horizon is full of more than its share of polemicists capable of bending their vehemence with a shameless disregard for what they’ve shrilly declared in the past. And the great soothing blankey of the web is that any kind of crap can be put up on it and the proponent can remain cloaked in anonymity.

But there is one issue on which the bedsit brigade and professional football pundits seem to achieve unanimity on. It is that Arsene Wenger has dug himself a professional grave and it is only a matter of time before somebody starts shovelling unemployment on top of him.

If Wenger is indeed sacked it could prove to be the epochal moment when English football definitively lost all contact with reality. Yesterday’s Old Trafford defeat will have been stingingly embarrassing for Wenger. But it was also one game. That it should cut the ground from under the Arsenal manager’s position will be proof that intelligence, integrity and foresight are football qualities as redundant as Wenger soon threatens to be.

Top-flight English football long ago sold its soul to the capricious, orgiastic frenzy of the Premier League, the worldwide franchise that generates unimaginable wealth for a tiny, badge-kissing mercenary elite that is becoming more remote to the fan base than any Hollywood A-lister.

Fuming about that has become as familiar a sound as a hungry agent flogging a client. So are despairing diatribes about the absence of loyalty any more, as players continually move clubs to earn even fatter cheques. For a sport as fundamentally in thrall to sentiment as football is there are long-term implications to that which will no doubt be put on a long finger which in turn will ultimately turn around and give a chastening poke of reality. It’s alright having millions of Man U shirts walking the streets of Seoul and Singapore but what happens when the denizens of Stretford can’t be bothered to go to Old Trafford and play the corporate game anymore?

In the midst of all this, what has Wenger done wrong? With no Siberian oligarch to pin any number of zeroes on to a contract, or Middle Eastern billionaires seemingly signing players on transitory gastro-intestinal whims, or indeed no American prepared to spend nine figures in transfer fees in one spending spew, the Arsenal manager has concentrated on some old football credos: encouraging youth development and always insisting on the sort of exuberant attacking football that might not always have managed the tricky combination of beauty and effectiveness but which has never sacrificed the principles on which it has been built in the attempt.

In purely financial terms, what have Wenger’s sins been? He continues to be prudent in his transfers, insists on a wage structure and demands signings under 30 to encourage a long-term commitment and benefit to Arsenal. The result is a football club in the sort of financial shape that doesn’t give accountants shingles when they look at the books. In short, Wenger’s tenure has been a model of practical and intelligent finance while at the same time the Frenchman has proved himself a real football man, one whose instincts would have allowed him excel at any time in the game’s history.

How such a profile can be construed as failure is as definitive a symptom of the malaise at the heart of the English game as you will ever need. Football might be a results game – as if any other sport isn’t – but there is something fundamentally wrong when Wenger is portrayed as some sort of failure, particularly by those who should know better.

It has been instructive watching sages of the game, in all branches of the media, tut-tutting about Arsenal’s reluctance to spend. A couple of central defenders, a creative midfielder and a classic number nine to hold the ball up are the supposed panacea to Wenger’s ills, reeled off in the sort of cant that suggests the ordering of a few boxes of McNuggets.

What has really been eye-opening, though, is the apparent acceptance that this fast-food approach to Premier League football is the way to go, a view wholly inconsistent with all that stuff about consistency of management, building from the ground up and playing the right way that we’ve spent years listening to.

Kenny Dalglish has been spending John Henry’s money like a sailor on shore leave, including forking out €40 million for a Geordie pony-tail with the movement and touch of a Clydesdale.

Even John Giles, normally the most resolutely grounded of pundits, and a man who educated a couple of generations of Irish viewers in the intricacies of the game, has portrayed that spending as a victory for real football men, rooted in some adolescent credo that managers squeezing money out of directors is an incessant battle of football good over football evil.

Most of us grow out of viewing the world in black and white pretty quickly, secure in the knowledge the world is usually full of grey areas. Black and white is easy when you’re chanting behind the goals, almost necessary even to sustain hopes of success. It surely isn’t asking too much for those paid for their expertise to not chant along with the mob.

The problem with success in the Premier League is it is irretrievably linked to the amount of money pumped into the tiny cabal of clubs with the resources required to trawl the best players. Anyone believing Arsenal have been in some way under-performing in the last six years need to get real. In many ways they have over-achieved to an outrageous extent.

The tone of any organisation is set at the top and Wenger has been the epitome of common sense combined with more than a little wit and an occasional ability to see only what he wants to see. Such a vice is not unknown among football managers. Some might even list it as a job requirement. Wenger has got plenty of flak for it over the years, sometimes from the very people who’re now proving pretty adept at the same thing.