Arsenal have passed on! They are no more, ceased to be! Bereft of life – they are ex champions!
It felt like Arsene Wenger was in his own Monty Python film yesterday as he covered up the bruises of his club's descent
IT felt like Arsene Wenger was in his own Monty Python film.
He was asked yesterday: “What have you done to your elbow?”
Wenger: “Nothing”.
Question: “But isn’t that a big bandage on your elbow?”
Wenger: “No, I haven’t got it any more."
Question: “Didn’t I just see it when you rolled up your elbow?”
Wenger: “Ah yes. It was a bit swollen up from repeated exercise.”
As usual Wenger was covering up. The most successful manager in Arsenal’s history was trying to hide the bruises.
Wenger is hurting because he knows this fickle business will be wishing him away again if Tottenham cuff them at the Emirates tomorrow.
The north London needle, hovering over Arsenal for the past 20 years, has flipped across Seven Sisters Road.
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Everybody is dialled into Mauricio Pochettino these days.
Poch is the bright young thing, the manager everybody wants to play for, the manager every fan wants at their club, the manager every member of the media cannot get enough of.
Even Thierry Henry — Arsenal’s record goalscorer — could not resist a trip behind enemy lines to meet Pochettino at the training ground this week.
It seems like a treacherous act and yet Wenger has to watch on, helplessly, as football’s congregation kneels at Poch’s altar.
When Wenger was winning Premier League titles, when the Invincibles went a season unbeaten in 2004, the Frenchman was at his captivating, compelling best.
The soundbites came thick and fast, almost as fast as the silverware piling up in the trophy cabinet inside the old Marble Halls.
“If it is coming, it is coming by horse,” he memorably remarked when he was asked if Sir Alex Ferguson had sent him a letter to congratulate him on the 2004 Premier League triumph.
Wenger is still a fascinating listen, when the mood takes him, but the conviction in his voice diminishes with every year that passes without the title.
The 68-year-old is a force — but he is a fading force.
Players queued up to play for him, with Patrick Vieira, Henry, Sol Campbell, Bobby Pires and the rest of the gang committing to the Gunners of old.
These days the spluttering superstars, such as Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil, leave the impression they are simply passing through.
Arsenal were football royalty once but the crown has slipped.
Wenger is so defensive now, waiting to remind the doubters and dissenters that “for 20 years” Arsenal were top dogs around north London.
He added: “We won the FA Cup and we got 75 points overall last season, even if it was a disappointment not to finish in the Champions League for the first time in 21 years. It was a positive achievement.”
Was it? History is all well and good but Tottenham are working in real-time.
They are the big noise in English football, with work continuing on their 61,000-seater new home at White Hart Lane while they borrow Wembley for the season.
Everybody is buying into Poch’s long-term vision, the five or 10 or 15 or 20-year plan that he spoke about yesterday.
There is an aura about the Argentine, a fascination.
To think of the frightful stick he used to get for not speaking English to television, radio and newspapers for the first 18 months he spent in this country with Southampton.
At Tottenham his transformation is complete.
He commands the room, well aware that his players must live with him popping up on their television screens on a 15- minute loop on matchday minus one.
Poch has built an impressive launchpad but Spurs have never quite reached for the stars.
With this fast, bracing approach, they have finally taken the right approach.
Poch, 45, loves the club, banking the memories of bygone eras when he invited Steve Perryman, Glenn Hoddle and Graham Roberts to the training ground for lunch this week.
They swapped stories, filling in the blanks for Pochettino about their FA Cup final triumphs of 1981 and 1982, plus the glory, glory night in 1984 when they won the Uefa Cup under the lights.
That talented bunch never could quite get their hands on the league title but Poch is slowly piecing it all together.
His players, Harry Kane, Eric Dier, Harry Winks, Dele Alli, Jan Vertonghen, Kieran Trippier, Christian Eriksen, know they are in the right hands.
These players dismantled Real Madrid at Wembley in the Champions League, beating one of the greatest club sides in the history of the game with a convincing, vibrant performance.
Poch said: “It’s important for clubs to find the right person.
“Every club wants stability and to create a long-term project.
“Manchester United had it with Ferguson and Arsenal with Arsene Wenger.
“In the last 20 years we have finished above Arsenal once. It’s a massive challenge to stay there and be competitive against a team that has won more trophies than us.”
Without Wenger or Pochettino there to remind us, you would never know it.