The least Arsène Wenger deserves is a royal Arsenal send-off

Take a walk around the Emirates Stadium and it is difficult to think of another football ground in the world where there are so many statues. Herbert Chapman’s is just across from what is now the Danny Fiszman Bridge. Keep on going past the Clock End and you will find Tony Adams immortalised in bronze, arms outstretched, celebrating happier times. Thierry Henry’s statue is another classic pose: on his knees, fists pumped, back arched. Dennis Bergkamp’s is in close proximity, as he often was when they were Highbury team‑mates, and it is not just the three players and one of English football’s iconic managers who have been honoured this way.

The story goes that a 12-year-old Ken Friar was playing football in Avenell Road in 1945 when the ball rolled under a car that turned out to belong to George Allison, the then manager. When Allison appeared from Highbury’s marble halls he liked the youngster’s determination to retrieve it so much he told him to report to the offices the next day and awarded him a job as a match-day messenger. Friar has been there ever since, working his way up to become managing director, and now has his own statue approaching the stadium he helped to design.

Nothing for Arsène Wenger, though. Not yet, anyway. Presumably it is just a matter of time and let’s hope, when everything has settled down a bit, even his more determined and vitriolic critics will be able to acknowledge it is the least he deserves after three Premier League titles, two Doubles, 21 years in office and the same number of FA Cups, seven, that Liverpool and Chelsea have managed in their entire histories.

READ MORE: Rodgers committed to Celtic amid Arsenal speculation
READ MORE: LaLiga - Griezmann should save his goals for another time - Valverde
READ MORE: Ligue 1 - €70m for Geubbels would be disappointing

Maybe it would be asking too much to expect the more unpleasant elements of the Wenger Out crusade to bear in mind, as one of my favourite sports writers, James Lawton, once observed, that you could collect all their football insights together and it would still not brush against the foothills of Wenger’s knowledge and achievement.

Yet it would be refreshing if when the relevant people get their way, as they surely will in the coming weeks, they do not lose sight of the fact that the subject of their rancour once qualified as managerial greatness. I tend to think Claude Chabrol, the French film director, put it best. “Sometimes,” he said, “you have to accept the fact you are the pigeon, and sometimes you are the statue.”

This, however, is not a defence of Wenger when there is so much irrefutable evidence that his peak years can be spoken about now only in the past tense. History will remember him kindly but his latter years have been the story of a long, accelerating decline and the supporters who have wanted change are entitled to feel vindicated. How can they not when Arsenal are five points closer to the bottom of the table than to the top and not just threatening to become a speck in the distance as far as Manchester City are concerned but also the Premier League’s entire top four?

It certainly feels as if the endgame is looming into view and, however unpalatable it is for Wenger, there does come a time when Arsenal have to understand that if their manager is not willing to cut himself free they might need to show the gumption to do something about it themselves.

Wenger lost his guarantee of a happy ending when he chose to stay on after the FA Cup finals of 2015and 2017 and one day he might realise that a lot of the people calling for top-level intervention are doing so for his sake – and because they want to spare one of the supreme managers of our times the ordeal of being seen as the problem not the solution.

It is never easy planning a long goodbye but that, more than anything, is what Arsenal have to do now. They would be lying to themselves if they allowed the slide to continue for another season and it is easy to understand what Jamie Carragher, in his television role, is getting at when he says the decision should be announced sooner rather than later so the sport, as a whole, can start toasting Wenger’s achievements rather than pitying him and rubbernecking in his direction.

On the day Brian Clough oversaw his last Nottingham Forest match at the City Ground the away end, filled with 4,000 Sheffield United supporters, sang his name. Is it asking too much to think Wenger also deserves a send-off fitting for football royalty? How much might the mood shift inside the Emirates if everyone knows for certain this is his farewell season? Or to put it another way, how much more spiteful might it get if the situation is allowed to drift and the fans suspect nothing is being done?

The counter-argument is that Arsenal’s players could conceivably sleepwalk through the rest of the season if they know their manager is leaving. Arsenal still have the Europa League to try to offer a fig leaf of credibility to a season of regression. They play Milan, starting on Thursday, for a place in the quarter-finals and Wenger will remember the decline in Manchester United’s team when Sir Alex Ferguson was supposed to be calling it a day in the 2001-02 season.

Ultimately, though, Wenger’s players will always find an excuse if they look hard enough and there is plenty Arsenal can do to control the narrative. A statue? Absolutely. A stand named in his honour? It is a surprise, frankly, they do not have one already. Yes, these might be bland prizes for a man who has lifted some of the more cherished pieces of silver in the sport. Yet the priority now has to be to get the goodbye right if this really is the end for Arsène Wenger and it would feel terribly disappointing if it couldn’t be turned into a celebration of the man.

Crewe have let down Bennell’s victims by ditching inquiry

To offer an insight into how Barry Bennell’s victims feel about Crewe Alexandra’s decision to abandon their plans for an independent inquiry, one of the former players who was subjected to years of abuse within the house of horrors that was Gresty Road tells me he was physically sick when he heard the news.

The revulsion is understandable bearing in mind Crewe’s pledge in November 2016 to do the right thing. “The club is determined that a thorough investigation takes place at the earliest opportunity and believes an independent review, to be conducted via the appointment of external legal counsel, is the correct way forward in the circumstances,” a statement read.

When it became obvious several months later that Crewe had not done anything of the sort their explanation was they had been advised to hold off until the trial was over. They declined to say who offered that advice (answers on a postcard, please) and there was no explanation when it was pointed out that the Football Association and Manchester City, both of whom had commissioned independent inquiries, did not seem to have found it a problem.

Fifteen months later, Crewe now say there is no point because the police investigation was so thorough. Yet the police have been looking for evidence of criminal behaviour, whereas the idea of an inquiry was meant to be to investigate any possible failings, understand what went wrong and, crucially, whether more could have been done (as every victim I have spoken to over this process seems to believe) to have saved those boys.

Instead the club have made it absolutely clear there is zero desire to meet the victims, now in their 40s, who have just helped put Bennell away for 30 years or, indeed, the ones who were involved in the 1998 trial and have not been part of the current police investigation. And those players might feel hurt and betrayed but, trust me, they are not surprised.

Right from the start, they have been telling me how Crewe have shunned them and made them feel like nuisances. Ever since this story came out, they have been shocked by the way a club with a duty of care don’t want to know, don’t want to listen and don’t want to talk about it. “They have treated us like lepers,” one says.

People ask why Manchester City have been spared this many headlines when they, too, have been accused of serious failings. Well, the answer should be obvious: City have shown a human touch, fronted it up and recognised the importance of bringing in independent lawyers to investigate properly and avoid allegations of a whitewash. Crewe, on the other hand, have done the precise opposite. The chairman, John Bowler, has shown what kind of man he is and if those poor boys who were raped, molested and psychologically scarred under the care of this arrogant, conniving and hard-faced club feel let down – well, tough. It is enough to make any decent person feel sick.