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Copied below a fairly amusing look at the ole myopic one. I've read some other articles by the author, Matthew Norman, and he does come across as a Spurs fan. Anyway some of it is a touch giggalishess . . . . . .
Matthew Norman: the time has come for Arsene Wenger to realise he has to go
Somewhere between the birth of punk rock and the publication of Andrew Morton’s Diana biography, the received wisdom correctly holds, British deference breathed its last.
Nowadays no one — not our Queen, her ministers, the Archbishop of Canterbury, not even Cheryl Cole — lies beyond attack from the vicious iconoclasts of both public and media.
No one, that is, except Arsène Wenger. Miraculously, the Alsatian alone continues to inspire a degree of deference unknown in Her Majesty’s realm since a peer was ostracised from society in the late 1950s for mocking her accent.
To those of us who have come to regard Wenger as a shot fighter, this is the leading mystery of an endlessly perplexing age.
Take the reaction to Arsenal’s defeat, having led their friends and neighbours Tottenham 2-0 at half-time, last Saturday.
Here was a feckless capitulation that ideally crystallised the managerial failure that has turned the Emirates trophy cabinet into football’s Marie Celeste.
Here, in fact, was the classical Arsenal season of recent years — the impressive start that flattered to deceive, followed by the drainage of self-confidence under pressure — distilled into a single game.
Arsenal under Wenger have become denuded of various things required to challenge seriously for the Premier and Champions Leagues, such as a vaguely reliable goalkeeper and a couple of battle-hardened veterans to nursemaid the precocious youngsters.
But the quality this side most fatally lack is the one without which no amount of dazzling brilliance is enough. They lack character – and with any team that, or its absence, inevitably devolves from its manager.
A guide to the anachronistic reverence in which Wenger is held arrived when Spurs scored their late winner.
A radio pundit declared of his furious flinging of the sponge, which so amusingly drenched himself and his assistant Pat Rice, that this was “about as much show of emotion as you’ll ever see from him”.
With a stubbornness worthy of Wenger himself, the media will not see past the clinically detached, professorial archetype it pegged him for when he arrived from Japan in 1996.
However often he succumbs to touchline temper tantrums, is sourly ungracious in defeat, or needs separating from a rival by the fourth official, this image of the effete and charming philosophy don on sabbatical from the All Soul’s high table persists.
The reality that Wenger’s masterful self-control suggests Gazza after a weekend lock-in at the Newcastle Brown brewery cannot permeate the consciousness.
If he responded to a marginally late challenge on Cesc Fabregas by removing an AK 47 and mowing down the offender, John Motson or Mike Ingham would murmur something about appreciating how even Wenger would have been driven beyond endurance by the tackle; and that the ensuing touchline presence of a uniformed officer seems a prissy overreaction to so trifling an offence.
If Wenger was always a queeny hysteric, that trait survives.
What has faded is the genius with which, for much of his first decade at Arsenal, he relentlessly brought in great players on the cheap and moulded them into teams who not only played exquisite football but fought like tigers.
His Olympian intransigence precludes him from doing the obvious — buying a competent goalie and that brace of gnarled veterans — simply because that is what everyone keeps begging him to do.
Arsenal are treading water at best, though the appalling home form of late suggests they are atrophying, yet no one seems minded to talk of replacing him.
Here one is reminded of Winston Churchill, so unspeakably magnificent between 1940-45 and so ineffably ineffectual when back in power from 1951-55.
Neither the media nor his colleagues had the heart to mention publicly, even after a severe stroke, that he was past it.
The lovechild of that union between eternal gratitude and well-earned deference was the stasis that finally yielded to Anthony Eden’s frantic quest to prove himself and the catastrophe of Suez.
If Wenger earned his deference by saving the democratic world, I must have missed it.
Certainly he won a bundle of trophies, and in glorious style, but that was then. Even Churchill finally accepted that no one can “keep buggering on” forever. Will Arsène Wenger ever do the same?
Matthew Norman: the time has come for Arsene Wenger to realise he has to go
Somewhere between the birth of punk rock and the publication of Andrew Morton’s Diana biography, the received wisdom correctly holds, British deference breathed its last.
Nowadays no one — not our Queen, her ministers, the Archbishop of Canterbury, not even Cheryl Cole — lies beyond attack from the vicious iconoclasts of both public and media.
No one, that is, except Arsène Wenger. Miraculously, the Alsatian alone continues to inspire a degree of deference unknown in Her Majesty’s realm since a peer was ostracised from society in the late 1950s for mocking her accent.
To those of us who have come to regard Wenger as a shot fighter, this is the leading mystery of an endlessly perplexing age.
Take the reaction to Arsenal’s defeat, having led their friends and neighbours Tottenham 2-0 at half-time, last Saturday.
Here was a feckless capitulation that ideally crystallised the managerial failure that has turned the Emirates trophy cabinet into football’s Marie Celeste.
Here, in fact, was the classical Arsenal season of recent years — the impressive start that flattered to deceive, followed by the drainage of self-confidence under pressure — distilled into a single game.
Arsenal under Wenger have become denuded of various things required to challenge seriously for the Premier and Champions Leagues, such as a vaguely reliable goalkeeper and a couple of battle-hardened veterans to nursemaid the precocious youngsters.
But the quality this side most fatally lack is the one without which no amount of dazzling brilliance is enough. They lack character – and with any team that, or its absence, inevitably devolves from its manager.
A guide to the anachronistic reverence in which Wenger is held arrived when Spurs scored their late winner.
A radio pundit declared of his furious flinging of the sponge, which so amusingly drenched himself and his assistant Pat Rice, that this was “about as much show of emotion as you’ll ever see from him”.
With a stubbornness worthy of Wenger himself, the media will not see past the clinically detached, professorial archetype it pegged him for when he arrived from Japan in 1996.
However often he succumbs to touchline temper tantrums, is sourly ungracious in defeat, or needs separating from a rival by the fourth official, this image of the effete and charming philosophy don on sabbatical from the All Soul’s high table persists.
The reality that Wenger’s masterful self-control suggests Gazza after a weekend lock-in at the Newcastle Brown brewery cannot permeate the consciousness.
If he responded to a marginally late challenge on Cesc Fabregas by removing an AK 47 and mowing down the offender, John Motson or Mike Ingham would murmur something about appreciating how even Wenger would have been driven beyond endurance by the tackle; and that the ensuing touchline presence of a uniformed officer seems a prissy overreaction to so trifling an offence.
If Wenger was always a queeny hysteric, that trait survives.
What has faded is the genius with which, for much of his first decade at Arsenal, he relentlessly brought in great players on the cheap and moulded them into teams who not only played exquisite football but fought like tigers.
His Olympian intransigence precludes him from doing the obvious — buying a competent goalie and that brace of gnarled veterans — simply because that is what everyone keeps begging him to do.
Arsenal are treading water at best, though the appalling home form of late suggests they are atrophying, yet no one seems minded to talk of replacing him.
Here one is reminded of Winston Churchill, so unspeakably magnificent between 1940-45 and so ineffably ineffectual when back in power from 1951-55.
Neither the media nor his colleagues had the heart to mention publicly, even after a severe stroke, that he was past it.
The lovechild of that union between eternal gratitude and well-earned deference was the stasis that finally yielded to Anthony Eden’s frantic quest to prove himself and the catastrophe of Suez.
If Wenger earned his deference by saving the democratic world, I must have missed it.
Certainly he won a bundle of trophies, and in glorious style, but that was then. Even Churchill finally accepted that no one can “keep buggering on” forever. Will Arsène Wenger ever do the same?
FLAPPYHANDSKI. That cracked me up Baz, Repped!
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