Wenger has earned respect. He has earned the right for discussions about his future to be conducted with intelligence not pitch-forks. He can still prepare a team well. He still represents a great club with decorum.
Clear-eyed, rather than blood-shot focus on the Wenger situation reveals that this is a manager who needs help in the transfer market. It is sad but true: the man who built the Invincibles has become a ditherer when it comes to signings, has become far too hesitant at closing a deal. He prevaricates when scouts come to him with targets. He hates overspending even if it is the only solution. If Wenger looked to bring in a new tea-lady, he would be torn over one sugar or two.
Player representatives, whether agents or lawyers, confide frustration at being kept waiting for Wenger to make a decision when they have got other clubs not only on speed-dial but on hold, seeking to conclude negotiations.
Nobody should weep for agents but Arsenal fans should weep at the missed opportunities, the number of players who moved elsewhere while Wenger dawdled.
Rather than dithering themselves, Arsenal's board need to address the situation, understanding first why Wenger has lost his touch in the player-recruitment business and secondly installing a proper structure for spending and seeing deals to fruition. The reasons for Wenger's stagnation are varied. He clearly misses the nudging presence of his friend David Dein. He takes his famous perfectionism in doing background checks on potential signings to extremes, an understandable stance but ignoring the reality that other managers move more swiftly.
He has a near-pathological unwillingness to pay a few million over the odds to guarantee the player. The contrast with Spurs this summer is notable; they have moved quicker, making attractive offers to get the deals done. Etienne Capoue? Wenger looked, lingered and pondered. Andre Villas-Boas and his technical director, Franco Baldini, acted. If Wenger was more decisive he could have strengthened Arsenal at both ends and would not be travelling so nervously to Istanbul on Tuesday.
Why not make Queens Park Rangers an offer they cannot refuse for Julio Cesar? The Brazilian international is a vastly superior goalkeeper to the inexperienced Wojciech Szczesny. Wenger believes in the young Pole and does not want to inhibit his development. Yet Szczesny could learn from watching Cesar and mature into an able successor long-term.
Pursuing Gonzalo Higuain was always going to be an expensive process but Arsenal became distracted by Luis Suárez's potential availability and ended up with neither. Their £40,000,001 offer for Suárez, which they smugly and naively thought would trigger a phantom release clause, was offensive, understandably enraging Liverpool, who became doubly determined to keep their No 7. Wenger increasingly looks like an ingénue in the transfer jungle.
Take Yohan Cabaye. Why a bid this late in the window? It hints at a lack of planning, arguably a lack of real regard for the player. Do your business early. Manchester City did. And go in hard and strong. Arsenal have offered £10?million, which Newcastle United rightly deem "derisory". Paris St-Germain are lurking. Wenger needed to act more assertively.
There is also the question of do Arsenal actually need a creative midfielder like Cabaye when they have Jack Wilshere? Chieck Tioté, particularly the early, hungry version, would bring more muscle to midfield. Cabaye is the type of player that Wenger would have spirited in unnoticed direct from France a few years ago, ambitious and reasonably priced.
Wenger's scouting network has not necessarily diminished. Others have improved (like Newcastle's under Graham Carr) while Wenger's reactions have slowed at a post-Dein Arsenal.
The real flaw at the heart of Arsenal is Wenger's working relationship with the chief executive, Ivan Gazidis. Wenger was involved in the appointment of Gazidis, effectively anointing the man who would be his boss. That inevitably skews the balance of power. Gazidis is nice but not particularly tough; a bit like the team.
Wenger needs someone above him who is not in awe of him, who does not, subconsciously or otherwise, feel indebted to him for the job. Officials at the Emirates Stadium must stop tip-toeing around Wenger.
He needs to be challenged for the team's benefit and his own benefit.
It does not need to be done aggressively. That is not the Arsenal way. But it does require Gazidis or Stan Kroenke to re-think and re-shape their whole buying strategy, appointing a football man to work in tandem with Wenger. The club missed the chance to bring Patrick Vieira in, to bring Brian Marwood in, Arsenal people now helping Manchester City.
It is a familiar lament on these pages: Arsenal do not need to change their manager – yet – but they do need their manager to change his ways in the transfer market.
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