The board didn't transform the team from a group of big, technical, high-tempo, win at all costs hard-asses to a bunch of tippety-tap, comatose, choking dwarves. That was all Wenger in his quest to deliver utterly pointless Wengerball MkII.

When he lost the leaders that had come through the ranks during the Graham era his fundamental failings rapidly outpaced his strengths. Shit like letting the players express themselves and train themselves. Bollocks that wrapped the squad in wool and compensated them handsomely for failure. That was all Wenger.

And then when it all went to shit he dragged on for years, master of all he destroyed, clueless about how to halt the slide and compounding the damage as each season passed.

The board's major failing was not having the guts to get rid of him as soon as the danger signs went up. A huge mistake that will cost us extensive time and big money to turn around.

It's very simple to explain why his record towards the end was comparable to Emery's best efforts and now Arteta's early results. Rot takes time to destroy the foundations. It eats away inexorably but, for a while, the house might appear quite normal. But it's doomed and all it takes is the progression of time for the true extent of the destruction to become undeniably evident. He injected the whole club with a slow acting poison that even now can probably take us lower.

Emery likely could have done a half decent job if the squad and the mentality had been somewhat stable, but he was out of his depth as a cancer surgeon. All he could do was watch while Wenger's darlings did what they do best - choke to death every time a genuine challenge was put in front of them.

Arteta faces the same, ongoing problems but at least he's shown some signs he might be able to treat elements of the rot. He's worked a small miracle addressing one of Wenger's biggest acts of vandalism, the defence. I wouldn't claim we are decent, but we could now say we are not catastrophically poor. I guess you can call that progress. And I suspect the weird team selections have a lot to do with general fitness and another treat left behind by Wenger, the overall softness of this squad and their inability to hack a tough season competing on several fronts.

There's so much to do here. Cascading failures across the spectrum. You fix one thing and ten other things collapse. I'll be giving Arteta time because the task he faces warrants it. Listening to fans claiming Wenger did a decent job is quite worrying because it's a prelude to shifting the megaton of shit produced by that inept old fool onto the shoulders of Arteta, should he not produce miracles in short order. Emery suffered that fate, although he never looked like being able to turn things around so he wasn't a great loss. Arteta will probably get the same, sometime during next season. But I have hope he'll be able to repair enough in the meantime to leave a much more realistic challenge for the next guy.

By then, Wenger's appalling legacy will biting into a third victim.