By Tony Ngare

Someone needs to bring me the head of Arsene Wenger on a silver platter. The Arsenal manager has successfully failed yet again to land a trophy for the seventh season running after the Gunners failed to cope with Sunderland at the Stadium of Light for a ticket into FA Cup quarter finals.

For seven years now, Wenger has sold us the youth product but trophies have remained a mirage. When people joke that when Arsenal last won a trophy Blackberry was still a fruit, and you analytically appraise this phrase and it’s true, you’ve got to be worried.

As if that is not enough, Wenger has now ‘discovered’ a new trophy — fourth and final Champions League slot in the English Premier League. Barring a miracle in the second leg at the Emirates against Milan, Arsenal is heading towards a seventh successive season without a trophy.

However, Wenger believes that simply attaining Champions League qualification should be viewed as a huge achievement.

"The first trophy is to finish in the top four," he told reporters after the defeat to Sunderland. "And that’s still possible. I believe finishing fourth is vital for us, so let’s focus on that".

As a certain blogger put it, over and above whatever else you have to admit that Arsene has added to the Arsenal lexicon in a way that will never be forgotten. ‘Fourth is a trophy’ is right up there with ‘Like a new signing’ when an injured player returns, but I do wish somebody at the club would tell him how badly this particular aphorism comes across. While I think everyone gets the jist of what he’s saying, fourth place is not, never has been and never will be, a trophy.

Invented achievements

It is, at best, an achievement. In fact, this season, more than any other, it’ll be an achievement and a half if we manage it, but when the club has just crashed out of two cup competitions in a week, competitions that provide a real and actual trophy at the end of them, to spout this again was as ill-timed

This man has systematically ‘dehumanised’ Arsenal fans to the extent that becoming number four in the league with a difference of upto 20 — 25 points between the winners and fourth slot holders is worth celebrating and offering sacrifices to the gods of the leather ball.

There is a reason why when I became number four in Class Four first term, I missed out on the exercises books, rubbers and pencils and cried all day. Since then I swore that I would always feature in the medal bracket — and I did.

Speaking of medal brackets, why don’t we have a brass or aluminium medal for the fourth athlete now that Wenger deems it worthy of recognition?

What’s in a name?

One would ask. This has been a hot debate since the Victorian times that informed Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

"What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," he posed.

But I wonder whether he would dare say the same to Newcastle fans. The fans have been recusant and reluctant to let go of the stadium’s former name, St James’ Park and replace it with a new one.

Workmen have been spotted removing yet more graffiti from a wall outside the grounds just days after a fan was charged with criminal damage for a similar display of defiance over the renaming of the stadium.

Club owner Mike Ashley announced last year that the famous old grounds would be renamed the Sports Direct Arena — after his company — and a new sign was duly erected and put up last week as the old name was ripped down.

The hacking down of the old signage outside the grounds sparked anger and one supporter hit back with the help of some white paint — but this was soon removed.

And now another fan returned to the same spot, early this week to cause club officials another headache, spelling out the name St James’ Park in big black capital letters.