LARRY RYAN: A team with a ceiling

Arsene Wenger’s tormenters are circling for the kill now. There is a Shakespearean vibe around North London. A great man is on the verge of being driven demented by betrayal and changed circumstances.

It could only ever have ended this way. They wrote him up as a learned professor knowing well that, one day, they would send him packing, in the final act, as a fool.

‘Wenger is in meltdown,’ the excited clamour goes. And since the Bard’s stuff doesn’t sell as well any more, they have begun to liken him to Basil Fawlty again, their greatest clown.