Stand up for Arsène

I had 20 good years supporting Manchester United but now I follow Arsenal, and I find the treatment of the magnificent Arsène Wenger by large sections of my fellow fans mystifying and depressing. I supported Manchester United because when Rupert Murdoch bought top-tier English football in the early 1990s and started marketing it aggressively at the middle classes — who, like me, had previously had no interest in the sport — United were the only logical choice. They played pulsating, swaggering football and often scored thrilling wins from seemingly impossible situations. The young men who made up the spine of the team had grown up together in a boys’ own story and — most importantly — they had a manager in Sir Alex Ferguson who was a high priest of romance.

But then he left. And what followed has been very dull. So I stopped supporting United and started following Arsenal. Chiefly out of admiration for their dignified and daring French manager.

Damian Reilly and Oly Duff debate Wenger’s future:

What I like most about supporting Arsenal is the football. The club win most of their games but never sacrifice style and flair for the deadening pragmatism of results. Wenger wants only to play and to win beautifully, and in an ugly world that is something I find uplifting. ‘I am a facilitator of what is beautiful in man,’ is how he once described his football philosophy. ‘I define myself as an optimist. My never-ending struggle in this business is to release what is beautiful in man.’ To my mind, this could only be improved if it was delivered in iambic pentameter.

What I most dislike about supporting Arsenal is the fans, or at least the thousands of them who kvetch and moan endlessly about the manager, as if they were somehow indentured to a hated boss.