We’ve had the drunks on Stoke station, the neatly made banner at West Brom with its time-to-go message, and half a dozen rather disappointed looking youngsters with their “Enough is enough” t-shirts at the Newcastle game.

And that’s not to mention a rather inebriated Ian Wright seemingly wanting to pick a fight with whoever decided not to re-sign Fabregas – which was presumably Arsene Wenger himself.

Against that we’ve had two long and loud choruses of “One Arsene Wenger” as the 4-1 victory over Newcastle came to an end, and a whole series of managers popping up saying this man has done more for football and more for Arsenal than anyone else.

But then counteracting that the sneering media suggesting that one day all Arsenal fans were against the man, and the next, following a victory, we were all in favour.

In a sense media comments portraying Arsenal fans as fickle are at the heart of the problem. Everyone has a position, there is no debate. Minds are made up, people have taken sides.   The media are not writing stories about Wenger for us, for we have already made up our minds. They are jeering at Arsenal fans so that supporters of other clubs can have a laugh at our expense. They know they are not going to change anyone’s mind.

Not that it matters of course – he will go when he wants. He’s got a contract, he’s won the FA Cup five times with the club (including, lest we forget, last May), he’s picked up three league titles, and done what no one has done since the very first league campaign – gone unbeaten in the league.for a whole season.

So he will decide, not some silly 15 year old screaming abuse on You Tube (or Ewe Chewb as I saw it called rather appropriately the other day), nor a journalist ordered to fill a few more column inches with his “7 things we discovered this weekend” which we didn’t discover at all.

But does all this make the debate about Arsenal’s management meaningless?

I suspect not, because ultimately Arsene Wenger will retire from Arsenal, and the club will be faced with the task of bringing in someone new.   And in doing that the big question will be asked, “who can we get to take over?”

Which in the end is the real question. And curiously, it is at that point the anti-Wenger campaign will matter, because their vitriolic campaign supported by their occasional supporters in the media, will be part of the club as seen from afar. Which means it will be part of what the potential new manager looks at.

He will look at the squad, the stadium, the board, the finances, the club’s record, the recent injury list, the expectations, the training ground… and the support.

Most of these factors will be positive. The stadium is considered by many to be the best in the country, and I must say for myself, having sat in all four sectors of the ground, and having once played on the pitch in a five a side tournament I place it above anything else we have in the UK.

I also think the squad is excellent – of course it can be improved (what squad can’t?) but as a core to inherit, it is superb. The board is stable – there don’t appear to be any Machiavellian dealings going on, the club makes money all the time and has no problem with FFP, and over the last 15 years the club’s record is incredibly consistent.

But I know that people then say that since the unbeaten season we haven’t done too much. And that is where the problems start.

Because the handful of fans who wear the “enough is enough” t shirts or hurl abuse on Stoke station, tend to have a vision which starts and ends with the fact that Arsenal should do better.

So an incoming manager now starts to get a flavour of the negative atmosphere at the club. The FA Cup is not enough. Before the defence of the Cup has even begun the victory in the final is dismissed as nothing, and the manager’s head is called for, Which means the need is to win the league, or the European Cup, pretty sharpish.

With the sort of resources of Man U with their world-wide marketing, or Chelsea and Man City with their oil money, that is possible as we have seen. But Arsenal now face the all three of those clubs, and has to do better than all three of them at once, and probably within a couple of years of the new manager coming in. And although we have money, we don’t have that much.

So what sort of manager would take that task on – especially in an era in which you are only as good as your last result?

Of course there are a few jobbing managers around who tend to get the big jobs. Fabio Capello is undoubtedly getting rather fed up with not being paid as manager of Russia – not even in the increasingly worthless Rouble. Dick Advocaat is unemployed at the moment… and we can go on building up a list like this.

But remember, being unemployed as a football manager isn’t like being unemployed for the likes of you or me. They normally leave the job with a huge pay off, or if the contract is ended, with a fair sum in the bank. They don’t need a job.

However if we don’t take a top known manager, then what? In the old, old days we used to have a succession of men ready.   Herbert Chapman was a new outsider, but when he died suddenly Joe Shaw, the reserve team coach, took on the role and dutifully won the league. He then opted to go back to the reserve team and up stepped the club secretary George Allison, who dutifully won the league for the third season running.

After him came Tom Whittaker, who had served as a coach under Chapman, Shaw and Allison, having played for the club, and won the league in his first season. He was followed by two more ex-players Jack Crayston and George Swindin.

Now my point in reciting that list is that although all the men in it are Arsenal men, only two of them were players held in high esteem. The last two. And both failed.

Sadly Arsenal didn’t learn the lesson, for they then brought in another player – the captain of England no less. Billy Wright. It was an utter disaster. Only when we went back to men who had a long contact with Arsenal, but were not players did we start to win again: Bertie Mee was next.

That pattern of ex-players doing poorly for Arsenal has continued. Terry Neil and Don Howe both underachieved, and we only got ourselves back together again when we brought in a player of very modest quality: Arsene Wenger.

So what does this tell us about what the club will do when Arsene Wenger decides to go?

Well, if they have learned the lesson of history, then if they feel the club needs a total shake up, they’ll bring in someone who has just won the Premier League or the Champions League.   But in that regard, do remember that when Chapman came in having just won the biggest competition in the world (the First Division) he gave the team a shake up, but it took him five years to win anything at all. And then it was just the FA Cup.

So if the Board ignore the lessons of history totally, they will bring in an ex-player of quality like Tony Adams or Thierry Henry.

Or if they follow the line after Chapman, they will promote one of the backroom staff who has been with Mr Wenger for quite a few years and knows the club fully.   Boro Primorac is a few years younger than Arsene, but he may well go when the boss does. Which leaves Steve Bould and Neil Banford as the other two men in the club who are in the frame. Maybe one of them could step up and bring in Theirry Henry as a right hand man, just as Mr Wenger had Pat Rice.

But the problem is, bringing in a new man doesn’t normally generate immediate success, and in a world in which you are only as good as your last match, and the Anti-Wengerians have their organisations firing on all cylinders, we could find ourselves with a new manager and then even more revolt than now.

And there is a bigger problem. The whole story of Wenger being useless, mediocre, not good enough is based on a comparison with only one thing – the opening years of Wenger’s reign.   But if we take the whole of the Wenger era, we find (in terms of the number of trophies or the percentage of wins in League games – however you want to measure it) that Wenger is far ahead of everyone else who has ever managed at Arsenal.

Way, way, way ahead of Chapman, Graham, Allison, Mee – all of them. Even when not winning things he has set the bar far ahead of everyone who has come before.

“How can that be?” demand the few “Wenger-out” people we see at the stadium. “He’s just not winning anything!”

Well, leaving aside his record in the FA Cup, you have to compare like with like – and football today is not like football during the era of Wenger’s Doubles and the Invincibles.

As noted, what we now have is a world in which Chelsea and Man City have the power to buy anyone, and manipulate the football market anyway they want, while Man U have a world-wide marketing programme that was started in the 1950s and which is the source of their financial might.

Whoever manages Arsenal he will be managing with funds far smaller than our rivals. .   Of course FFP regulations might help, but at the moment they are not doing that much. Man City’s restriction on players for Champions League games was a tiny step forward, but not that much for them to worry about.

The playing field is now very uneven, and it will take a genius of Wengerian proportions to take Arsenal to either of the major trophies again, as long as the oil money continues to pour in.

So for me, the moment Wenger goes, will be a moment of holding one’s breath. The best I can hope for is either another unknown (as Wenger himself was in England) or a Wenger nominated successor who knows exactly how to do it.

I hold my breath…