Ask a journalist what the best story is, and he or she will tell you it is the one that wins you the Pulitzer Prize – the top award for journalistic endeavour.

Ask a journalist what the easiest story is, and if he or she is honest, the journalist will tell you it is the story that requires no research, no investigation and no evidence.  In short it is a story that takes a current prejudice or rumour and repeats it. And if you want just such a story then look no further than the coverage in the media of Arsene Wenger and his continuing job as manager of Arsenal.

There was a comment from the Daily Express quoted in a recent article on this blog about Arsenal possibly replacing Arsene Wenger with Joachim Low which said, “The trauma of this year has taken its toll, particularly the second half of the previous campaign, where Arsene Wenger allowed his future to become a circus.”   A perfect piece of no-cost journalism.

Just pause and think for a moment.  The announcement was made in May 2017.  In the run up, Arsenal won nine matches out of ten including victories over Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United.  On that sort of run of results most fans who like victory rather than conflict would hope he could pull the same trick this season, next season and every season.

Indeed he achieved that run as he “allowed” his future to become a “circus” while in the process of winning the FA Cup (for the third time in four years), and while becoming the most successful manager in the entire history of that competition.   A competition that started 145 years ago.

Knocking Arsene Wenger, and knocking Arsenal, has become the first thought for journalists who want the cheapest, quickest article as they have done for years.  You might remember the story that suggested that Arsenal had the worst injury record of any club in the history of the Premier League and it was all the fault of … Arsene Wenger.    Arsenal in fact is a middle of the table club when it comes to injury numbers, and no matter which way the figures are evaluated.

However, Arsenal do have a problem: but it is not Arsene Wenger.

At the moment club football is run primarily on spending unprecedented amounts of money on players.  Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Man City, Man United and Bayern all behave in this way, and employ managers who specialise in spending money.

In fact the third top spender is Pep Guardiola (who has spent just over one billion Euros during his career at FC Barcelona, ​​Bayern Munich and Manchester City together).  Second in this list comes the current Bayern coach Carlo Ancelotti (1.13 billion) and leader is… José Mourinho who has spent 1.43 billion on players.

The question therefore is, is Arsenal’s owner actually going to employ a manager who will spend, spend, spend along the level of such managers – because if not then Arsenal are going to struggle to win the Premier League or the Champions League.

Now if we look at Kroenke’s other sporting clubs beside Arsenal we find that they all have two things in common: they don’t spend much money, and they don’t do very well in terms of winning things.  In fact, the most successful club that Kroenke has in his portfolio across the last four years is… Arsenal.  The rest are all mid-table flops.

What Mr Wenger brings to the party is the ability to manage the club on a budget, while bringing through young players of merit. You only have to compare the number of players who have been brought up through the Arsenal under 18 and under 21s (as was) with other clubs to see how successful he has been with this.

While John Terry remains the most recent Chelsea player to have come up through the Chelsea youth system, Arsenal currently have Walcott, Bellerin, Nelson, Maitland-Niles, Wilshere, Iwobi, Coquelin, Reine Adelaide, and Akpom all of whom spent some or all of the developmental years in the youth teams of Arsenal, and who are now part of the first team squad.

The simple truth is that there is no way that the owner is going to employ a manager who is going to come in and want to spend money as a way of doing business.  They want a manager who will continue to work on a budget, nurturing youth players and just using the transfer market to fill in the gaps.  And even then he will have to ensure that many of these players are brought in at a modest price because as yet their talent has not been fully developed.

Now whether that person is Joachim Low, or whether that is someone else, I have no idea, but I do know that the owner of Arsenal will want to keep Mr Wenger for as long as he can, for the simple reason that he delivers trophies and relative success out of all proportion to the money spent.

And to see what “relative success” means, consider this.  While Arsenal have been winning the FA Cup three times, while ending up in the Champions League three times, out of the last four seasons, both Liverpool and Tottenham have had two top four finishes and won nothing.

One of the big spenders, Man U, have, like Arsenal, got three trophies (FA Cup, League Cup and Europa League) but only managed one top four finish in the last four years.

And to take another, Manchester City – well they have won the league once, and the league cup twice coming in the top four each time, but are (like Liverpool) currently banned from signing any Academy players because of past abuses of the system while anxiously awaiting the results of a Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing as to whether they should also be banned for a year from signing all players.

There is not the slightest chance of Arsenal becoming like Chelsea, Man U or Man C in terms of expenditure on new players.  And given the lack of managers who have the experience of Mr Wenger in terms of bringing through youth players to bolster those players we can buy, I suspect the owner is desperately trying to persuade Mr Wenger to stay for another ten years, not trying to get rid of him now.