Five thoughts on Chelsea 2 Arsenal 0

Chelsea 2 Arsenal 0

This was not “same old, same old”
For sixty minutes, Arsenal were very good. Playing a better team away from home, Arsenal were reasonably in control. One moment of skill from Eden Hazard had cut Arsenal open but for the most part, Arsenal were defensively solid and producing quick counter attacks.

In such matches, it’s the small margins which count - Jack Wilshere’s heavy first touch when in on goal, Santi Cazorla’s missed attempt to bring Hazard down, Martin Atkinson failing to send Gary Cahill off and letting Oscar kick the shit out of the Arsenal players for 70 minutes before finally deigning to show him a yellow card.

But if you don’t believe Arsenal were good, watch the game again and watch Cesc Fabregas off the ball - I won’t pretend to have watched absolutely every Chelsea game this season, or every Barca game for the previous three, but I watched enough (and 200+ games at Arsenal) to know that Fabregas normally does not work even nearly that hard. I was actually really surprised he lasted all 90 minutes given the amount of work he was forced to do. Similarly, look at how Branislav Ivanovic - one of Chelsea’s best attacking players this season, hardly ventured forward.

And that was in no small part down to the great movement of Arsenal’s front six. There were a couple of frustrating occasions when good opportunities to shoot were passed up, but in the main, Arsenal were patient and probing and looked very much like they would score at least one goal.

To some extent, that changed with the substitutions. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is a very talented player but I’m not convinced he’s the player you want when Chelsea are sitting deep, particularly given his telegraphed passing (in action once again yesterday) is exactly the sort of thing which gives Chelsea the chance to counter.

What does it all mean?
Pointing out Arsenal played well does not imply happiness with the result or diminished expectations. Only an idiot would compare with last season’s game to consider where Arsenal are at, given Chelsea scored two once-a-season goals and Arsenal had a player sent off before the game was even twenty minutes old. But what it does mean is that Arsenal can compete in this sort of game without surrendering the vast bulk of possession, like happened so often last season in away games.

Sure, you can make the case that it didn’t matter as Arsenal went to places like Swansea and hit them on the break. But it’s very hard to absorb pressure like that and that was borne out against better teams like Liverpool, Man City and Everton. By playing in a more positive way, Arsenal stand a much greater chance of getting results in games of this nature. That’s how the team has improved, for anybody who says Arsenal just replaced like with like this summer.

But it doesn’t mean you’re always going to win big away games - tight games swing on small margins, and yesterday those margins weren’t in Arsenal’s favour.

Incidentally, if you’re using this as a stick to beat Arsene Wenger with, check Barcelona’s away record in the Champions League under Pep Guardiola. Or that in eleven away League games to Arsenal since the Abramovich takeover, Chelsea have won just four times. Maybe it’s just quite hard playing away to good teams.

The Ozil narrative
Here’s the thing, Mesut Ozil wasn’t at his best yesterday. But there does seem to be a perception amongst a large proportion of Gooners that as he is our most expensive player, Ozil should always be the best player on the Arsenal team. And that if he’s not great - like yesterday - he should be dropped. In other words, he’s being judged by completely different criteria to everybody else in the team.

In Bacary Sagna’s penultimate season, he copped a load of abuse until people realised he was giving the ball away because nobody was offering him a passing option. There does seem to be a general trend for people only to blame the player involved in the last phase of an error. So Koscielny gets blamed for the Hazard penalty despite him going past three players first and Alexis giving the ball away for no reason, and Ozil gets blamed for losing the ball even if he has no passing option. It’s absolutely farcical. Ozil played okay yesterday - perhaps it’s worth remembering that even Lionel Messi went about three months without scoring a League goal from open play last season.

Complaints about the system is the new calling for a DM
By its very nature, a 4-2-3-1 with a double pivot transitions into 4-1-4-1 when a team is attacking. There’s certainly been a tactical tweak this season, but claiming that it has engendered an unnecessary season of transition is both completely premature and more importantly untrue. The actual issue is one of personnel and too many players who want to play in the same positions. It brings benefits - for example, Sanchez and Welbeck ensured Ivanovic couldn’t get forward yesterday - but it also means Arsenal’s attacking play can sometimes lack a diversity of options.

As ever, I’d encourage people to really think - you might disagree with the tactics on show, but there are usually intuitive reasons why a good manager would pursue particular tactics.

Checked expectations
Last season, Arsenal were very lucky with how the fixture list stacked up until December and the momentum gathered was definitely worth an extra few points - how many is pretty much impossible to quantify, but at least four or five. In other words, just to stand still this season (i.e. to get 79 points again) Arsenal needed to noticeably improve over the summer. Probably the squad did get better - injuries to Mathieu Debuchy, Nacho Monreal and Arteta (as well as Theo Walcott’s continued absence) have not helped Arsenal. But regardless, it was always asking a lot of a team who were widely tipped to finish fifth last season, to kick on this year and win the League?

Add in Arsenal’s tough start to the season - already played four of last season’s top six within the first seven games - and there’s a lot to be encouraged about. I think people would be a lot happier if three points had been taken away to Leicester, and that was basically a freak result. Ultimately, your perception of how the season is going probably depends on whether you expected a serious title challenge.

Keep the faith.

It Ain't So Bad

A couple of years back Arsenal had a Dutchman playing up front who scored lots and lots of goals. So people drew up pointless League tables showing “Arsenal without Van Persie” to show the team’s dependency on him.

In case you were in any doubt, this was an immensely stupid thing to do. Because - here’s something amazing - if Arsenal hadn’t played Van Persie, they would have played somebody else in his place. In fact, the sheer ridiculousness of this so-called thought experiment was born out the following season when Arsenal were indeed without Van Persie but finished fourth, rather than the fifteenth the tables indicated. Funny that.

I mention this because the latest one was this weekend people tweeting that not only were Arsenal doing worse than last season but “imagine where we’d be without the late goals against Everton and Palace”. Apart from anything else, this is a facile thing to tweet because it doesn’t require much imagination.

But much more importantly, football matches last 90 minutes. It’s a drum I’ve banged relentlessly but to reiterate, having good stamina is something incredibly valuable in football. Arsenal scored those late goals because they were fitter than the other teams. Which was partly a consequence of tactics in the Everton game, despite those tactics being feverishly criticised, probably by the same people.

If you watch the closing act of Ben Jonson’s “The Alchemist” on its own, it’s impossible to suspend your disbelief and enjoy the farce ongoing. Watch the whole play and it sort of makes sense. At risk of a very stretched analogy, most of the discussion around Arsenal has reached the point where people are so determined to be ‘proved correct’ that they stretch the bounds of logic to breaking point and beyond, and it is just a constant farce.

To be clear, it hasn’t been brilliant so far this season. But the way idiots come out of hiding with the slightest sign of a bad result is ludicrous. The other one so far this season (back, in case you’d missed it since April) is that “Wenger is done at the top level”. The evidence for this seems to be that Arsenal took a bit of a shellacking against Dortmund.

This was then coupled with the untruth that Arsenal had consistently struggled in the biggest European games to ‘prove’ some sort of point.

But here’s the problem: on matchday one of this year’s Champions League, ten home teams won. One away team out of sixteen won, and they played against ten men for 75 minutes. All PSG’s money couldn’t get them a win away to Ajax. Atletico Madrid (with the manager many seem to want for Arsenal) lost away to Olympiakos. And yes, Arsenal lost to Dortmund.

But if you want to spot the odd one out, it’s that Dortmund are much better than Ajax or Olympiakos. And that this result was a rare aberration: Arsenal have consistently had an excellent away record over the last three seasons, roughly the life-span of the current team - seven wins, three draws, and four defeats, two of which came in dead games in Athens. It doesn’t exactly strike of being done at the highest level.

For all Arsenal’s relative lack of success in the Champions League, you’d be hard-pressed to claim Arsenal had been knocked out by an inferior team since 2007. Since 2005, only three poorer clubs have reached the Champions League final: Liverpool, Atletico Madrid and Dortmund. Liverpool have since endured four years outside the Champions League and now appear to have a manager who isn’t much cop at signing players. Dortmund have done well in big games but struggled to beat smaller teams - I think Klopp is an excellent manager but struggling to beat Mainz (etc) is an issue for a top manager. Diego Simeone has done brilliantly so far but is also batshit crazy.

But it’s also a bit of a moot point - I think very few people would deny that there are some managers who are tactically better than Arsene Wenger. It doesn’t mean he’s completely useless, or anywhere close to it.

And here’s the key point - Arsenal haven’t changed their system this season just so that Wenger could save some money and not buy a defensive midfielder. That’s the argument of the people who genuinely think the manager gets a bonus for not spending money and is desperate to wallpaper his downstairs toilet with fifty pound notes.

The reality is that on a base level, Arsenal’s system last season went against the manager’s principles. It was, truth be told, a little boring. And so by playing a 4-3-3, Arsenal have greater fluidity, greater attacking purpose, and more bodies who can pile forward. Ignoring the Dortmund game as a freak game (the team was knackered from playing City), the stats show the team having more shots and more possession. Exactly the sort of stats you look for as positives. As it happens, I think Santi Cazorla needs to play more to give us greater defensive balance higher up the pitch, but in general there’s a lot to be optimistic about.

Because here’s the key thing: without playing particularly well (except for in patches against City), Arsenal are still fourth in the table. The only people who are really down are those who expected Arsenal to win the League this season. I was never one of those.

Keep the faith.

Six thoughts on Arsenal 2 Man City 2

Arsenal 2 Man City 2

This was good fun
Social media has seen a great democratisation of football analysis, with every man and his dog able to have a view on things, but it’s also led to a 24/7 discussion of all things Arsenal, leading to people taking football far too seriously.

I’ve never held any truck with the ‘philosophy’ Jose Mourinho espouses of win at all costs. I think football should be enjoyable, and I don’t derive enjoyment solely from winning at all costs. Football should be fun and if you don’t enjoy it, you’re doing it wrong.

So sure, were there tactical tweaks which might have made Arsenal’s life easier? Yep, but that doesn’t mean this wasn’t a highly enjoyable way to spend a Saturday lunchtime.

And to a large extent, that’s because this was the most entertaining display I’ve seen from Arsenal in a long time. Scintillatingly quick transitions from defence to attack allowed Ozil, Sanchez et al to really stretch the City defence. Arsenal’s reputation as entertainers (built in the era where Cesc Fabregas was the fulcrum of the side) stemmed from brilliant possession football in the opposition half and shooting from good positions.

This was different, but arguably more entertaining, with the ball zipping from one end to the other in just a few seconds. And at the heart of all that was Mesut Ozil. No doubt he will face criticism once again – a quick skim of my Twitter feed (and I like to think I largely follow sensible people) indicated that’s the case. But I don’t really see why; the difference between him and Fabregas is that he makes the ball move so much quicker, only ever taking one or two touches. A style based on quick transitions simply can’t contain Fabregas, and on the basis of yesterday’s performance, my hopes for the season are much higher. This was not just an entertaining performance – it was also a very, very good performance.

The curious case of Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil
Attacking players like Sanchez and Ozil are ultimately judged on goals and assists – but it’s only really fair to judge them over the course of the whole season. Some woeful decision-making from Alexis was one of the main reasons Arsenal trailed at half-time. Conversely, Ozil makes the right decision almost every time he gets the ball. But because he hasn’t really supplied any goals and assists so far this season – whereas Alexis already has three goals, the narrative is one of Ozil underperforming. I’m sure by the end of the season that wrong will have been righted. For the record, I thought Ozil was very good yesterday.

The Aaron Ramsey paradox
Ramsey has been miles worse than he was last season. I never expected him to score 30 goals this season, but his defensive work is lacking and he is taking up some bizarre positions. And yet because he is plausibly the fittest player in the team, you can’t really take him off after 70 minutes if he’s having a bad game, because it’s so likely that his stamina will tell towards the end of games. His goals against Palace and Everton are testament to that.

To lose the first half was a travesty
Ignore the bollocks about it being “so very Arsenal”. That’s only if you discount the last three years where Arsenal have rarely dominated big games even for ten minutes, let alone 35-40 minutes. It’s a completely different team from the one which used to get hit on the counter-attack, and the first City goal stemmed from a sensationally good piece of play from Jesus Navas.

But to dominate territory to such a great extent – presumably this was the last big game start ever for Frank Lampard – and to go in 1-0 down was incredibly harsh on Arsenal. Danny Welbeck must take some blame – sure he’s only had two training sessions but you don’t need team practice to finish the chance he had. Just imagine the reaction of Gervinho had missed it.

Mark Clattenburg was atrocious
And I don’t say that as a partisan point – I thought there was quite possibly a foul in the build-up to the first Arsenal goal. But its pretty galling to read criticism of Arsenal’s “lack of steel” when every time Arsenal players committed a slightly bad foul they picked up a yellow card. James Milner’s foul on Mathieu Debuchy in the City left-back position just before half-time should be shown at conferences as the dictionary definition of a yellow card foul. Clattenburg’s decision? Just a free kick. Rotational fouling is something that happens and I can deal with. But Milner committed three yellow card offences and emerged from the game without a caution to his name. Farcical.

Arsenal’s Carling Cup line-up will be very interesting
Presumably with yesterday’s injury to Debuchy, the team against Southampton will be a mix of a comically inexperienced defence and then a very experienced midfield and attack, with Abou Diaby, Tomas Rosicky and Lukas Podolski desperately in need of game time. And the way Wojciech Szczesny’s been playing, it will be a good opportunity for David Ospina to show what he can do.

Keep the faith.

5 thoughts on the Champions League draw

Most fans’ views on Twitter are very odd
Of all the bizarre complaints, people who were asking not to draw Olympiacos were the strangest.

If you’re somebody who actually goes to matches, every person I know who’s been to Athens (whether for Arsenal or just for a holiday) has said what a great city it is - even if they’ve been multiple times.

If you don’t go to matches, you should have wanted to draw Olympiacos because they were one of the weakest teams in their pot and so were a plum draw for Arsenal.

The conclusion I’ve come to is simple: people are talking rubbish on Twitter. Who knew?

The fixtures could have fallen better
Although the draw was a favourable one which Arsenal should qualify from, the way the fixtures fall is not. Playing away in Dortmund just three days after a tough Premier League game against Manchester City is not ideal. Similarly, having the most important fixture (Galatasaray at home) sandwiched between games against Spurs and Chelsea is not what I would have chosen.

As I wrote in my season preview, Arsenal have an atrocious record playing away after playing Champions League midweek. It’s already been born out by dropped points against Everton. Playing away after five out of six of the group games could well be what kills any small hope of Arsenal winning the League.

The TV pairing system is patently ridiculous
I find it very strange that people complain about the coefficient system but not about UEFA’s use of TV pairings when making the draw. Because Dortmund are paired with Schalke for TV coverage, once Chelsea had drawn Schalke there was a one in three chance Arsenal would draw Dortmund again. That’s not a random draw and it’s why we keep seeing the same fixtures over and over again.

Sure, hate on the coefficient system for reinforcing the status quo - but the Champions League would be more interesting if the groups weren’t so similar. And the worst part it is that the TV pairings are done for TV, but it actually makes for worse TV. It’s hard to get people excited about Arsenal vs Dortmund for the fifth time in three years.

The Nouveau Riche have changed the Champions League
It used to be the case that winning your group would have you nailed on for a favourable draw in the last 16. Now, with Bayern Munich and Man City in together, along with PSG and Barcelona, it’s eminently plausible that Arsenal could win the group and still find themselves up against one of the best teams in Europe in the last 16. Incidentally, Arsenal really need to get to the last eight this season - one more season of PSG and Dortmund doing well and Arsenal will almost certainly lose their spot in pot one.

There’s going to be a lot of ticketless Gooners in Brussels
Take everybody who ever goes to a European away game tweeting about how much they’ve enjoyed it, very cheap train tickets midweek to Brussels, and a small Anderlecht ground and what do you get? Far too many Gooners planning to go to Anderlecht.

It’s lucky that British people are so fond of the EU as I’m sure people will enjoy exploring the EU institutions instead of watching Arsenal!

Arsenal 2014-15 season preview

It feels slightly weird not to be going into the new season wondering at what point Arsenal might actually spend some money and strengthen the playing squad. For the first time in years, the Arsenal squad looks at least somewhat better than when the season ended.

What’s more, positive feeling in the stands tends to help on-pitch performances and there’s no doubt that Gooners are buoyant, with many even talking of winning the League. I’m just unsure we really should be.

The truth is that to get 79 points last season was a remarkable return from that squad, particularly considering the injury problems in the second half of the season. Sagna was nowhere near as good as he used to be, Kieran Gibbs was improved but nothing special, Flamini is superb at kicking people but less good at kicking the ball and Szczesny was better without ever being brilliant.

And that’s just defensively. Offensively, you have a choice on the left wing between Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (yet to consistently deliver in goals or assists), Lukas Podolski (yet to actually ever sprint in an Arsenal shirt) and Santi Cazorla (not really a left winger). Combine that with question marks over Jack Wilshere, Mikel Arteta and Tomas Rosicky getting no younger and a great deal of uncertainty about how Theo Walcott will recover from his ACL and the optimism around the Arsenal camp seems more misplaced. That’s without even mentioning Olivier Giroud’s pretty average finishing.

I’m not trying to destroy the whole squad here, I’m just making the point there seems to be an awful lot of pressure on Koscielny and Mertesacker staying fit once again, and an expectation that Aaron Ramsey will continue to excel and Mesut Özil will kick on from an impressive first season.

So, the question is can Alexis Sanchez, Calum Chambers and Mathieu Debuchy push Arsenal on to greater things? I think there’s no doubt that Sanchez is an excellent signing for Arsenal, especially with Walcott injured. Even when Theo returns, Sanchez could fill the troublesome left-wing spot or provide an alternative to Giroud up front. With Özil delivering through-balls for both Walcott and Sanchez, Arsenal could score many, many more goals, as they really need to.

When I was previewing last season I said there needed to be more goals from midfield to really challenge - while Aaron Ramsey provided them, Theo Walcott’s injuries meant that the team was still short of goals. 68 goals scored is not nearly enough to win the Premier League these days, especially considering the number of shots on goal conceded last season. I fully expect Sanchez to help address this and I’d be surprised to see Arsenal score fewer than 80 goals over the League campaign.

Of the other signings, Debuchy is a good player but it’s not exactly inspiring and I think very few people would pick him over either Cesar Azpilicueta or Pablo Zabaleta. Calum Chambers is a lot more exciting and was secured for an excellent price, particularly in the context of the English player premium and the way transfer prices seem to have spiked this summer. Even so, I’d be surprised to see him start more than 20 Premier League games unless Koscielny’s achilles injury is worse than feared. I don’t expect David Ospina to play in the League unless Szczesny is injured.

Given that there have only been two major departures (Sagna and Vermaelen), its certainly fair to say that this Arsenal squad looks better than last season. And I should add that I’m basing my predictions on no there being no further major additions to the Arsenal squad.

So why my lack of shared optimism? First, to get 79 points last season was the squad massively outperforming itself. Momentum is incredibly important in football and Arsenal definitely benefitted from having easy fixtures stacked together in the first half of the season. The fixture list doesn’t allow Arsenal to (easily) build up momentum in the same way in the season ahead. In other words, just to stand still the squad needed to get better.

Not only that, but Arsenal have a very poor record playing away after Champions League games: over the last four seasons, Arsenal have played away 19 times after Champions League games, winning just seven times and losing eight of those matches. Providing progress is secured against Besiktas, the Gunners will play away after seven of their first eight Champions League games: that’s a minimum of 20% of League fixtures in which you can expect Arsenal to only win one out of three games. That’s going to be a major stumbling block to winning the League.

Most importantly, I just think Manchester City and Chelsea have superior squads to Arsenal. Chelsea have filled the obvious defensive holes in their squad while at the same time signing Cesc Fabregas and Diego Costa. I certainly think its plausible that Costa could struggle - I’m just unconvinced it matters. Chelsea were pretty good last season without a decent striker and have now added one of the best playmakers in the world. City only got better as last season went on and if Sergio Aguero can play over 30 games will probably win the League again.

There’s definitely some important caveats I should add here: an easy Champions League draw for Arsenal (assuming qualification) would diminish the importance of playing away repeatedly after playing in midweek. But equally, if you want more pessimism, Arsenal haven’t made a serious title challenge in a year after an international tournament since 1998-99.

So, realistic predictions: 3rd in the League, Champions League quarter-finals and maybe a domestic cup.

Keep the faith.

Evaluating Arsene Wenger

Even medium-sized businesses which turn over tens of millions of pounds invest enormous amounts in marketing their grad schemes, so keen are they to recruit the 'brightest and the best' (I was just sick a little too) to their organisations. Yet football clubs which turn over far larger sums continue to hire from a very small talent pool. If you want to become a professional football manager, you generally have to have played the game at the highest level.

What's most bizarre is how few clubs go against the grain in this regard. Particularly given almost all football clubs are competing over a very small section of society (ex-footballers), even if it were true that the average ex-footballer makes a better manager than an ordinary citizen - a highly questionable hypothesis - it still does not mean that no citizens could make a good manager, and clubs would face far less competition in getting their man (or woman). It's hard to believe that training a bunch of bright 20-somethings for ten to fifteen years wouldn't give top clubs a better talent pool to hire from than they currently have, and without paying the large amounts of compensation that are regularly necessary to hire a good manager. Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman of Ogilvy, made a similar point with regard to businesses only hiring graduates with a 2.1 and above.

Given modern football is so obsessed with statistics, it is genuinely confusing as to why clubs are ignoring stats which show that over the long-term a change in manager makes no difference in the majority of scenarios. Now this might be because the role of manager isn't actually that important. But this seems implausible given the vastly disproportionate success that certain managers have had at a variety of clubs, at different levels. So the more likely explanation is that most professional football clubs are hiring very badly.

That football remains a 'closed shop' makes life far easier for the top managers. Most managers are simply copying what went on in the dressing room when they were players because otherwise there's very little guidance available on how to manage. Sure, you take coaching badges but if these were actually important then clubs turning a blind eye to people without their badges would not be nearly as common.

How does this relate to Arsene Wenger? Chiefly, it goes a long way to explaining the context in which he should be evaluated - that he is relatively successful is not altogether surprising: he is an intelligent person putting his brain to football, competing against a lot of unintelligent people who also lack the same capacity for independent thought.

So comparing Wenger's success to most other managers - and viewing him as successful in that light - is a false comparative. You don't have to be very good at all in order to be better than most football managers.

That's not to suggest Wenger hasn't been successful. But it does mean you need to do a little more than point out a lack of eligible replacements to prove how good he is: I think many readers of this esteemed blog, with fifteen to twenty years training, could make better managers than most of the people managing in the Premier League.

What, therefore, are appropriate criteria to evaluate how good managers are?

The journalist Raphael Honigstein likes to point to total wage spend as evidence that Wenger has not really over-achieved: Arsenal's wage bill in the last few years has consistently been the fourth-highest in the League, and they have consistently finished fourth. Particularly given there is quite a strong correlation between wages and finishing position in general, this seems to suggest that Wenger has not done anything especially special.

There's three important responses to this. First, Honigstein's argument is contingent upon a view of wages as being entirely merited - that footballers are paid 60k a week as a reward for their talent and performances. But there's an alternative explanation that to me is quite persuasive: particularly between 2007 and 2011, Arsenal handed out a series of contracts that rather than being a reward were designed to be incentives: we'll pay you 60k a week so that you perceive yourself to be as good as a 60k a week player and play better. This is entirely consistent with the general view of Wenger as a developmental coach, who instills an enormous amount of self-belief in his players. It's also consistent with how players such as Denilson, Bendtner and Eboue (the 'deadwood') played the best football of their careers after being handed these contracts, and were therefore so incredibly difficult to get rid of, due to their massive contracts. Getting more out of players by choosing which young players to hand large contracts to is a sign of good management.

The second response to the wages argument is that Arsenal had to pay higher wages to young players to at least be able to compete in the market somewhat: if you cannot afford the fees for older players, you have to be prepared to pay younger players more to get them to sign for Arsenal, rather than a rival club. This empirically stacks up: some of the very best young players have joined Arsenal, at least partly because they could earn more than they do elsewhere. This was a clever ploy: Liverpool tried to copy it and failed, and moreover, there is now far greater competition for young talent than 8-10 years ago, as a direct result of Wenger's methods. It seems unfair to pin wages on him when net transfer spend has remained so low as a result of signing young players.

But most importantly, even if you don't buy either of these responses, Honigstein's argument seems a bit irrelevant: failing to finish above the enormous wage bills of Man City or Chelsea, or Ferguson's Man United is hardly 'performing to par'. Failing to finish above two of the richest teams in the history of football, and somebody widely admired as one of the best managers in football is not exactly total failure. A better measure might be to compare with teams who spend wages at a similar level - and continue to perennially finish below Arsenal: Liverpool and Tottenham. This seems to be quite a good marker that even if you want to view wages as all-important, Wenger has been at least something of a success. Critically, the logical corollary of this argument is that Manuel Pellegrini has not been a success this season as Man City had the highest wage bill and therefore should finish first. It's pathetic. It basically involves belittling much very good achievement with words like "should". The whole reason football is so watchable is that it is so often unpredictable. Conforming to expectations is something than an enormous amount of even very good managers struggle with.

And critically, even if you think that wages are importantly, they're not the only important factor. The lack of spend in the transfer market at least mitigates Arsenal's wage bill: at the very least, being in less debt is a normatively good thing.

It's for these reasons that I don't think wages is a good metric by which to evaluate managers. Rather, I'd pick two other factors: one is what players say about managers and the other is legacy.

With regard to what players say, it's quite a good way of differentiating between top managers - obviously it's just opinion but when people who played under other excellent managers say that Wenger is the best manager they played under it shows a lot. For one thing, it debunks the media narrative about Wenger not knowing anything about tactics and always playing the same way - if this were the case, ordinarily you would expect players to pick another manager who does 'do' these things as the best manager they played under. To be clear, I haven't picked this factor simply to endorse Arsene Wenger: Santi Cazorla says Manuel Pellegrini is the best manager he ever played under.

But given I've already established that being better than most managers is not enough, it does provide an effective comparison between successful managers. That so many players - Thierry Henry, Samir Nasri, Cesc Fabregas, Kanu - who have played under pretty much all the best managers of the generation (perhaps bar Ancelotti) say that Wenger is the best manager who they worked with, this means a lot. This isn't me simply selecting people to prove a point: of the players who have spoken publicly about who their best manager was, players who have been managed by Wenger overwhelmingly select him and also praise him. On this basis, it's fair to place Wenger amongst the very best in the business. But lots of players also have kind things to say about Jose Mourinho who I consider an inferior manager to Wenger.

That's why legacy is also relevant. I'd view legacy in terms of two things: first, success the club enjoyed during a manager's time in charge; and second, the position a manager left the club in after he left.

In absolute terms Wenger comes out below many managers on the first metric, and I expect this is the point at which many people will start to disagree with me. To appreciate Wenger's achievements in the last eight years requires a context which is often overlooked. Suffice to say the following: Arsenal have finished above every single Premier League team within the last four seasons, they are not the perennial also-rans which the media portrays them as.

Consistent success - even if it isn't the success people might want most - is still a rare commodity in football. The only team who can match Arsenal's run of seasons in the Champions League is Real Madrid, a club which is subsidised by the local government.

Even the trophies thing is a bit of an anomaly: in his entire managerial career (a season longer than Wenger's time at Arsenal), Carlo Ancelotti - an admittedly terrific manager - has won three League titles. Wenger has won three at Arsenal. That they came ten years ago is not really the point. In the overall context of his time at Arsenal, it is still a great success.

It's certainly a legitimate criticism of Wenger that Arsenal have not taken the domestic cups as seriously as they should have done for the last five or six years, but the flip-side of that is that when a place in the top four has come down to one or two points, the extra fitness players have by not playing in the FA Cup can actually be very beneficial. As ever, few things are simple.

Ultimately, to view Wenger as a failure involves believing a top-four finish is something to be sniffed at. I don't believe it is.

On the second question, that of what followed after a manager leaves a club, this is far more subjective, especially as Wenger has not left Arsenal. A priori logic shows that a manager could leave a club in a great position and they could still flop. But that's not what Alex Ferguson did. Even if you believe David Moyes is a poor manager, Ferguson left United with the fifth best squad in the League. What followed was likely if not inevitable.

If you look at the direction Arsenal are headed in - a squad on long-term contracts, a stadium debt which is mostly paid off, new sponsorship deals - everything looks very positive. Moreover, given it looks like Wenger will stay, the proverbial trophy monkey will surely be lifted.

I don't think Arsene Wenger is necessarily the best coach, the best tactician, the best transfer market operator or the best motivator. But on an overall basis, I think he is pound-for-pound the best manager in world football. Back in your box Guardiola.

Why the focus on Arsenal's trophy drought?

In case you didn't know, it's been almost nine years since Arsenal won a trophy. During the ensuing seasons, there's been plenty of causes for hope and almost as many moments that would still cause many a Gooner to close their eyes with despair.

Read any mainstream media publication and the entire debate is on the one hand "Arsenal have won nothing for ages" and on the other "ah but…" and then a host of mitigating factors, although the mitigating factors are never nearly well enough explained. Even if you think they are, it's a moot point.

Take this tweet from Bruce Millington:

Happy for Arsenal and Wenger. They take ridiculous amounts of stick and if any team is entitled to scrape through unimpressively it's them.

— Bruce Millington (@brucemillington) April 12, 2014

You probably don't know who he is, but I'll enlighten you: Bruce is the editor of the Racing Post and therefore isn't really trying to sell his paper to football fans. Why's that important? Because he isn't obsessed with the 9 Years narrative. As he says, Arsenal take ridiculous amounts of stick.

How long have you been hearing about how long it's been since Arsenal won a trophy? At least four years. And yet take in the following five statistics:

- Liverpool have won one Carling Cup in eight years
- Tottenham have won one Carling Cup in fifteen years, six years ago
- Despite an investment of over a billion pounds, Chelsea have won the League just three times in eleven years since the Abramovich takeover
- Manchester City despite spending the better part of a billion pounds have won one League title since they started ploughing money into the club seven years ago and are yet to win a Champions League knockout tie
- Real Madrid haven't reached the Champions League Final since 2002, despite being subsidised by the Spanish government

You'll never hear any of those things in the mainstream media. The narrative is exclusively what Arsenal have or have not done, with very little discussion of their rivals' failure. All they bang on about is how Arsenal have the fourth largest wage bill in the League and so you'd expect them to finish fourth, and therefore you can mitigate anything Arsene Wenger has done and tacitly claim he is an average manager.

Why is this a weak line of argument? Well, just looking at the 2011-12 data Chelsea and Manchester City's wage bills were vastly bigger than Arsenal's. Manchester United's was 15% larger. Incidentally, Arsenal finished above Chelsea that season but let's overlook that.

Liverpool's wage bill is 15% smaller than Arsenal's, with Spurs spending a similar amount. Presumably if Arsenal are supposed to make up the gap on the teams above them then you could also expect the teams below them to do that to Arsenal? But apparently not. Apparently that is an expectation you can only place on Arsenal.

Even if you don't want to completely ignore the enormous mitigating factor for Arsenal's trophy drought, it still begs the question why other clubs aren't questioned about their lack of success and trophies. Unless of course, Arsenal aren't actually that bad but it's just a good story which sells papers and page views. Because that's when even a cursory glance at the facts shows.