Calm down, Arsene, you've been getting an easy ride

 
19 February 2013

There is no more cosseted manager than Arsene Wenger.

Fellow members of the Arsenal establishment, employers and employees alike, give him the unquestioning, unchanging respect accorded Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United — almost regardless of the divergence in their clubs’ fortunes — and he has the bonus of natural support from the press.

Journalists like him. They have always liked Wenger and not just because, from the day he arrived at Arsenal, he followed a habit of feeding them a story at every briefing — an interesting observation, not just a rant or a devious ploy on the Ferguson model.

Rather than insult our intelligence, the amiable Alsatian seemed to equate it with his own, and chance encounters during World Cups or European Championships enhanced this impression — Wenger would happily chat about tactics or techniques.

Of course, you knew he didn’t really consider you an equal. But he was polite enough to make a thorough job of the pretence.

Understandably, then, the press have been slow to represent the increasing majority on the Emirates slopes who believe that Wenger’s time, while immortally successful and entertaining for much of its 16 and a bit years, is up.

If United had been performing as Arsenal have done this season — and the Glazers have made sure Ferguson’s budget hardly dwarfs Wenger’s — there would have been little mercy for the 71-year-old Scotsman.

There would have been calls not for a taxi but a wheelchair, with appropriate cartoons.

All Wenger got yesterday was a story claiming that he was to be offered a new contract. Some hatchet job that! But paranoia comes to them all.

It is, I suppose, a consequence of prolonged exposure to an industry in which every counterpart is trying to beat you. The consolation is that, when you quit, rich, it goes away.

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