The key question for Arsenal: what happens to Wenger's duvet coat?

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.

When good gaffers get mad — the art of lashing out in the technical area

So West Ham boss Slaven Bilic has escaped with an £8000 fine for trashing a TV microphone boom against West Brom. It’s not easy for an irate gaffer to find a new inanimate object to trash near his technical area. Presumably the FA gave Bilic some credit for his innovative choice, rather than just kicking the traditional water bottle.

The FA's decision will inevitably annoy Jose Mourinho who was given a touchline ban after theatrically kicking a water bottle against the Hammers in December. As Bilic quipped after the game: “The problem is that he hit that bottle like — well it was a great volley, to be fair. He should have miskicked it! He hit it too good.”

Water-bottle kicking has also been exploited by Arsene Wenger, who once beat the ground with an imperfectly closed water bottle against Spurs and greeted a disallowed Arsenal goal at Old Trafford by kicking a water bottle only to get his angles all wrong and scoop it up into the air with his right foot.

LOTTA BOTTLES

Hitting the bottle can be a dangerous exercise for the modern gaffer. Tim Sherwood managed to pull a hamstring backheeling a water bottle when Aston Villa drew with Sunderland in 2015

Lashing out can take many forms. Tim Sherwood was also prone to chucking his gilet on the ground in a fit of pique, while more bellicose bosses have taken it out on opposing players. Alan Pardew, then at Newcastle, was banned from the touchline for seven games after going head to head with Hull’s David Meyler in 2014 while Leicester’s Nigel Pearson ‘light-heartedly’ placed his arms around the neck of the prone James McArthur in 2015.

Premier League bosses are uneasily caged in their technical areas; ready to lash out at just about anything that comes close. Perhaps we should credit Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp for resisting the urge to stamp on his own glasses during Liverpool’s recent poor run.

Should Leicester drop Vardy and Mahrez?

A postman called Lee Chapman (not the old Leeds striker) got a lot of publicity last year for doing his round dressed as Jamie Vardy and then joining in Leicester’s title-winning celebrations. This season it’s been tempting to wonder if Lee Chapman has actually replaced Vardy in the Leicester line-up, as the once-prolific striker has only scored five goals all season. Vardy almost joined Arsenal in the summer and though he did the romantic thing by sticking with Leicester, he might now be wondering if he should have gone. He’s been suffering from a lack of service and the loss of Kante’s brilliant tackling and counter attacking instincts, but Vardy today looks like a player woefully short of confidence.

Vardy’s taking a touch too many where once he was firing in first-time volleys such as that unstoppable goal against Liverpool. The winger turned striker is now 30 and perhaps had the season of his life last time round, destined never to be repeated. Perhaps he might benefit from a rest and coming off the bench against tiring teams where he could regain his pace and confidence. But for the moment maybe Ranieri should give games to more prosaic strikers such as Slimani, Okazaki and even the wantaway Ulloa.

HUTH SORRY NOW

The decline of Mahrez has been equally alarming. Admittedly he made a great chance for Slimani at Swansea, but he still looks unwilling to take on his man. Perhaps Ranieri should apply the old Harry Redknapp school of coaching, and insist he gets in at least ten crosses a game and goes on a set amount of dribbles into the box. He looks like a player who needs to hear some home truths.

Another worry for Leicester is that Morgan and Huth are creaking at the back. Huth was let go by Mark Hughes at Stoke because he was felt to be past his best. He responded with one final season of abrasive defensive brilliance, but now at 32 he’s not the force he was and has been further restricted by the clampdown on tugging and pulling at corners. His partner Wes Morgan is 33 and is also fighting against time. Was it the form of Kante as a defensive shield that made them seem so solid last season?

No-one in football would want to see Ranieri sacked after last season, but with the club facing up to a relegation fight now is surely the time to bring in some hungrier younger players.

Peter Crouch — the ultimate Moneyball footballer?

Peter Crouch has scored four times since his return to the Stoke City line-up just before Christmas, including his 100^th Premier League goal (and his robot celebration), which isn’t bad for a 36-year-old. Crouch often strikes me as a Moneyball-type of player. There’s a great chapter in Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball where he sits in on a meeting of the Oakland A’s baseball scouts discussing whom to pick in the draft. The scouts make comments such as, “he’s got big thighs… it’s a soft body… a fleshy kind of body.” They dismiss players who look the wrong shape or have a unusual gait.

Lewis explains how Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s general manager, deduces that traditional baseball scouts are subjective when judging players and have their own cosy language and culture. They reject players too quickly and the five “tools” of a baseball player are overvalued. Basically they pick players who they think look like baseball players. They project on to them what they think they should become. And the world of football is similar.

Peter Crouch is tall and gangly, standing at 6ft 7ins and just doesn’t look like a footballer. He’s had a peripatetic career via QPR, Aston Villa, Southampton, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Spurs and Stoke. Yet he’s scored once every two games for England (22 in 42 games), a comparable strike rate to Wayne Rooney, Bobby Charlton, and Gary Lineker.

NOT JUST A BIG LUMP

Yes, he lacks pace, but the close control of Crouch is often underrated and he’s much more than an aerial presence. Had the volley he scored from 35 yards (after teeing up the ball with his thigh) for Stoke against Manchester City been scored by, say, Ryan Giggs, it would have bee billed as the goal of the century.

Another player dismissed as a big lump up front, West Ham’s Andy Carroll, recently expressed his admiration for Crouch. Carroll might be generally seen as unstoppable in the air, but the football world expressed astonishment when he scored a stupendous overhead kick against Crystal Palace — the sort of sublime effort that might have come from the departed Dimitri Payet. It shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise as immobile old Andy has always been able to play a bit on the ground; witness the way he beat three defenders and stroked the ball into the top of the net against Swansea in 2015.

There are many more Moneyball players if you look for them. Crystal Palace sold striker Glenn Murray even though he returned from long-term injury to score seven goals at the end of the 2014-15 season. Murray looks a bit ungraceful, a journeyman striker. Yet he puts himself about and scores goals. Palace thought they could do better with Connor Wickham and ultimately Christian Benteke. But had they retained the honest Murray — who is still banging them in for Brighton — they might not have been facing up to a relegation scrap.

Football is still unscientific, coaches still back hunches and there are a lot of players out there who don’t look like A-list players. But as with Peter Crouch, a closer look at their stats might well reveal a severely undervalued resource.