Tom Watt: Arsene Wenger is still the best Arsenal have ever had

Radio host and Arsenal fan Tom Watt has insisted the Gunners are still on the right path despite failing to win a third trophy in a row.

Last Sunday's Premier League defeat ended the club's title ambitions and came just days after defeat to Liverpool in the Champions League quarter-final.

But Watt has insisted all is not lost. He said: "The pundits have been forming an orderly queue to tell Arsene Wenger how and why he's got it wrong, impatient newcomers at Arsenal's shiny home in Ashburton Grove are up in arms about another season without silverware and there are even one or two out there calling for the manager's head.

"Me? I'm already looking forward to next season. In fact, I'm looking forward to Saturday lunchtime and a home game against Reading. I believe in the manager and in this team who, in spite of their fallibility - maybe even because of it - I enjoy watching more than any other in over 40 years of following my local club."

But Watt insists that while Wenger may have made some mistakes this season, he is the finest manager in the club's history, adding: "I was lucky, growing up round the corner from Highbury, and I've been even luckier to witness Arsenal's re-invention under one of the greatest football managers of all time.

"Never mind the pre-Sky era, you only need to have been following Arsenal since Wenger arrived to recognise that, this past decade, we've died and gone to football heaven in N5. Don't get me wrong: I'll get a good moan in most weeks. And not just about the referees' decisions that have cost us so dear since the first wrong one - the injurytime penalty at St Andrew's, on the afternoon the wheels began to come off.

I'd have had Jens Lehmann in goal, I'd have been playing William Gallas - not Kolo Toure - at right-back since Bacary Sagna got injured, I'd rather have seen Theo Walcott than Emmanuel Eboue given the chance to fill in for Tomas Rosicky wide on the right and, most importantly of all, I'd have done pretty much whatever it took to keep Lassana Diarra at the club at the turn of the year.

I'm not suggesting Wenger is the perfect manager. I'm just stating the obvious - that he's the best Arsenal have had and has achieved more than enough to be trusted to put things right.

"Wenger clearly believes playing beautiful football and winning trophies don't have to be mutually exclusive ambitions. He's a purist, dedicated to individual and collective technical quality. But he's also, plainly, a very bad loser.

"Unlike last season, Wenger's recent frustrations haven't been about how far off winning silverware his team have been. He's been spitting feathers because he knows how close they've come.

"Is he tough enough? More to the point, are his players? These players, it's worth remembering, were expected to fall apart once Thierry Henry left last summer. They'll be tougher for this season's disappointments, that's for sure.

And they're better than tough as well: brave. Brave enough to believe they'll win things playing the way Wenger wants them to. I've been watching Arsenal a long time now; long enough, anyway, to believe they will, too."

Source:Dailymail