In all the articles on
the Wenger succession at Arsenal one crucial question has been missed. What
happens to Arsene Wenger’s duvet coat? You know the coat, the padded winter
number that Arsene has terrible trouble zipping up, the one that stretches down
to his calves. As someone once quipped, he resembles a particularly well-insulated boiler. Arsene looks eminently capable of spending a night alone in the
French Alps with just his coat as a bivvy-bag.
If the duvet coat is to go to Arsene's successor then he has to be a very tall gaffer indeed, a man in the Jurgen Klopp or Peter Crouch mould. The coat
would simply envelop diminutive bosses like Antonio Conte so the Gunners’ board
should immediately being a height requirement into their planning. They can
probably rule out Big Sam on the grounds of busted seams.
Other clubs have made similar mistakes. Part of the
problem with the botched departure of Alex Ferguson from Manchester United was
that David Moyes was not handed Fergie’s black Crombie, worn in his latter-days over a
black zipped-up polo-neck, the one that made him look like an elderly
Glaswegian bouncer as he squared up to Roberto Mancini.
Wenger’s duvet coat has proved so vital to Arsenal in
winning the Wenger Cup (fourth place) over the last decade that it might even
be given its own role after his retirement. Perhaps with advances in technology,
some sort of Wenger-bot could be created to fit the duvet coat. It could sleep at
the training ground and appear in the directors' box, occasionally
kicking a water bottle and telling journalists that in England we are always
one game away from a crisis. As indeed are Arsenal, unless they identify a plan
for the duvet coat.
