IF ARSENAL are to achieve their one remaining objective this season, to qualify for the next Champions League, they need to do what Arsãne Wenger does best: renew their spirit.

The next three Premiership games are away to Aston Villa, Everton and Liverpool. No cups, no Thierry Henry, no home crowd. Nothing but their youth and Wenger exhorting them to believe in their talents.

For their sakes, the professor of modern management has to be decisive. He must instil in them that Henry, the talisman, cannot help them now. He created a team of foreigners in our land and persuaded them that they can take on the world.

His very French view that there is injustice all around fuels Arsenal’s purpose. It also conditions his behaviour and that of the players, and has gone some way towards destroying what he has built - and lest we forget, built magnificently - over a decade.

Maybe it is better that they start to salvage their season away from the Emirates. The new stadium doubles the crowd, but halves the volume. There is a greater distance between the supporters and the team, and a debt to pay, something that Wenger knew would deprive him of top-class recruits.

Many new spectators, paying up to £60 for the privilege of becoming Arsenal regulars, are learning that beautiful highlights have to be separated from the reality of a side that has to find a rhythm. We hear the impatience of the crowd more than before. We see the players pass and pass, and miss chances by the hatful.

Admirers become critics. Arsenal, they say, are eye-catching but overelaborate. The players want to “walk” the ball into the net. This new, expanded audience does not buy eternal tomorrows. The supporters want silver and they want it now. There could be 375m reasons why it is harder this season than last - the cost of the new stadium.

The frustration is contagious. Even Henry, between bulletins of chronic pain, lost the sureness of touch that brought him 174 goals from 254 league games.

Some speculate that it is a good thing that Henry is written off for the season. Wenger, they say, should sell him and rebuild. So it is Thierry’s fault that Cesc Fabregas and Denilson show such promise but such profligacy? It is Thierry’s mess that Arsenal lose concentration defending set plays? Brutal facts need to be faced. Henry is 30 in August, his sell-on value is not what Barcelona offered last summer and he is not the same athlete. The team have Gilberto, a captain by example. While Henry is inoperative, there is no decision to be made on his future.

Equally, there is no option for Arsenal other than Wenger’s way. He is not a buyer, as Chelsea are buyers. He is not a pragmatist putting results ahead of performance. His motivation is finding young talents to brainwash to his style. You find fault with that? Then look away, or look back to what George Graham served up as “One-nil to the Arsenal” winning football. Maybe Henry, the temporarily broken symbol of Wenger’s reign, may never have fitted in. “We have had disappointment after disappointment,” said Wenger on Wednesday. By morning, he had signed Fran Merida on professional terms. Merida, 17, was lured to Arsenal from the same Barcelona school as Fabregas. Wenger, the incorrigible recruiter of gifted youth, is already on the next wave.

Jason Culina, an Australian at PSV Eindhoven, observed: “I watch Arsenal every week on TV and having played them I think they could be the best team in the world in the coming years.”

The coming years: Wenger’s refrain, if not right now the music Arsenal fans wish to hear.