Thinking about the Giroud situation, it seems to me that when Wenger sold Van Perise, and brought in Giroud, Carzola and Podolski it must have been obvious to him that we would be nowhere near winning the league this season. Putting aside the advantage he handed Manure - Giroud was an obvious punt, coming from a weaker, and less physical league, despite his goal tally last season. Podolski - despite being a seasoned international had failed miserably at Bayern. Cazorla had done well at Malaga - but even if he was a superb technical player - he was far from tried and tested in the EPL.

And lets face it, Wenger is hardly a stranger to imports from foreign leagues crashing and burning, despite any impressive backgrounds.

For the past 6/7 years when we have been a selling club, the crown jewels that we have sold have all been Wenger development players (eg Cesc; Whore; RVP - even Song), or decent technical imports whom Wenger has provided a perfect platform to showcase their skills and can then claim that he has made them 'world class' (eg Nasri; Hleb).

The perception is that Wenger will never spend big on homegrown players, but that is not strictly true - as we paid top dollar for the likes of Walcott and the Ox.

The bottom line is that much of the reason why we have been treading water all these years is that with one noteable exception, Wenger only buys potential. We criticise him, but by any frame of reference he is far from being a 'shit' manager. He is simply not.

Instead, I wonder whether his true failing is simply that he is as happy to massage his ego by being famed for being the master developmental manager as for winning things, and would rather look constantly for the next Henri than make any pretence at competing properly with the big boys on the football pitch? In this, is club success merely secondary to Wenger's ego?