WHO should be the next manager of Arsenal, seeing that the club hasn’t won a thing since 2005 and they believe it is their divine right to do so every year? There is quite a lot of speculation that Arsène Wenger, having reached 60 and been with the club for 13 years, may not be of this football world for much longer. As a consequence there are a lot of online polls asking fans whom they would like to succeed him — and this is where we can all help. Let’s build up a head of steam behind a suitable candidate for this most noble of Premier League sides.

I have contributed to three different online polls suggesting the Gunners need a manager of true international class and with a reputation for football played with flair. I have concluded that the obvious answer is John Barnes — with his trusty sidekick Jason “Double Trigger” McAteer as assistant manager, who with his cheeky scouse humour and razor-sharp brain would surely endear himself to the Emirates faithful very quickly indeed.

Also, given that Arsenal enjoy perhaps the most commendably multi-racial following of any British club it is entirely fitting that they should set an example and appoint a manager who is black, given the poor record of British clubs in this regard. In fact, so terribly sensitive is everybody about this sort of issue that I think we could probably persuade the Arsenal board that it would be racist not to appoint John Barnes, and an affront to Nelson Mandela, Mary Seacole, etcetera. Plus it would ease John’s evident financial problems, or “tax oversight”, as he described it.

So come on, let’s get a campaign started, flood the online polls and petition the board — and then in a year or so we can meet in a pub to admire our work, perhaps on the day Arsenal are away to Peterborough or Scunthorpe. It’s a lovely thought, isn’t it? Shame that we could probably only pull it off with Newcastle.

The fans, right now, seem to want Dennis Bergkamp, under the familiar delusion that footballers who play with an instinctive elegance must be highly intelligent and therefore brilliant managers. The fact that I cannot think of any successful manager who was that sort of player, except for Glenn Hoddle, suggests to me that this is a flawed thesis, as West Ham are currently discovering. The best football managers have tended to be pugnacious thugs, anonymous midfield terriers, ugly but pragmatic goalscorers, lumpen central defenders. And this makes sense, I suppose, as they tend to be players who made the best of their limited resources, the same quality demanded in management.

There is a case for saying that Wenger has been the best Arsenal manager since Bertie Mee or even George Allison. It was a wise appointment and the board have done the right thing in sticking by the man, despite murmurings of dissatisfaction (just about the only thing you can hear at the Emirates above the gentle munching of sun-dried tomato focaccia).

As a club they have an enviable record in choosing managers judiciously, with only the Stewart Houston-Bruce Rioch hiccups in the 1990s to spoil the record (and even Rioch looked to be a pretty good thing at the time. Elegant player, though that was the trouble). Few boards have a better sense of cometh the hour, cometh the man — even when it’s a fairly horrible hour and the man in question is, therefore, George Graham.

Few in the Premier League have shown Arsenal’s perspicacity and pragmatism when it comes to choosing a manger who is right for their club. The only real challenger, I reckon, is Dave Whelan’s Wigan Athletic, a club that is denying the existence of gravity for a fifth successive season. Whelan has an admirable record in choosing managers, even if he did succumb, briefly (it’s usually brief), to the inevitable Rioch hiccup. His task, over the years, has been to find men who will fulfil a certain limited ambition, although one that has increased incrementally every season. In the lower leagues he has squeezed the best out of odd-job men like John Deehan; in the Premier League he entrusted Paul Jewell with ensuring safety. Whelan has become a bit of a kingmaker, re-inventing a bruised Steve Bruce, who is now knocking them dead at the Stadium of Light, and taking a very shrewd gamble indeed upon a certain Roberto Martinez.

Whelan’s ambition for the past season or two has not been to merely survive, but to establish Wigan as a mid-table side that is capable of playing attractive football on a limited budget. Remarkably, it looks as if this ambition is being achieved. Watching the gallantry of Hull City, Reading and now Burnley over the past few seasons we tend to forget that Wigan are still there and doing more than merely surviving on even more meagre resources.

It would not surprise me if Whelan’s reputation is enhanced further with Martinez eventually departing to the Emirates. He’s the sort of man they like down there; foreign, likes a bit of flair, doesn’t spend too much, thoughtful. That is unless we can get my John Barnes campaign up and running before Arsène calls it a day.