He stayed too long and should have realized this, but I think he loved the club so much that he thought he had a duty to return it to the top and still believed in himself to do it.

Things that really screwed him over were:

• The English animosity to a foreigner showing them how it’s done. It’s easy to forget how abnormal foreign managers and players were when he arrived and the general football community never really accepted him because of this.

• Ferguson. The problem wasn’t that he was a great manager, it was that he had undue influence over the decision makers in English football. Will never forget that 50th game, but there were so many games where Man Utd would get decisions their way. In the end this contributed to not winning as much silverware during those early years as we should have done.

• Move to the new stadium. This hamstrung us financially for years meaning we had to rely on youth and selling our best players. That Wenger kept us in the top 4 whilst making a profit year in year out is nothing short of a miracle.

• Oil clubs. At the same time as the stadium move the worst possible thing happened, Putin’s favourite oligarch set up shop to launder dirty Russian money and expand influence. A perfect shitstorm that killed our chances of at least a couple of PL titles as well as the CL.

• Agents. They became ever more powerful and greedy during Wenger’s reign and Wenger could hardly hide his distaste for them. It ended with many agents being persona non grata at Ashburton Grove and Wenger being off their contact list. The pool of players we could buy became more limited and we absolutely missed out on some important players because of this.

• Boardroom mess. Things are calm and serene now but we should remember that during most of Wenger’s time at the club there was turmoil behind the scenes, war even. Wenger never recovered from Dein’s departure in my opinion as he never had that guy there to advise him and tell him some hard truths from time to time.

• Wenger himself. He wasn’t without his own failings. He could be stubborn and I think a little too emotional which translated to the team in adverse ways. He wasn’t able to keep up with the speed at which the game was modernizing.

But I will say this about Arsene, I will defend him passionately every time I am able. There has never been anyone who loved the club more than he did, who did more, who suffered as much as Arsene. He suffered more than he should have as the board hung him out to dry time after time to avoid taking responsibility. We should be eternally proud to have had such a gentleman as him as an icon of our club and it shames me how he was treated by some of the fans by the end and that he still doesn’t feel welcome back at the stadium. A statue isn’t enough, more should be done to recognize what he did, gave, and meant for our club.