There are two big trophies in England. The first is to win the Premiership. And the second domestic trophy is to qualify directly for the Champions League. That’s what we have done. For me, it is not enough. But it is the minimum requested that you want to do and we have done that 13 years on the trot now. So that’s not too bad. - Arsene Wenger speaking to the BBC after the Fulham match.

So that’s alright then. Arsenal have banked a trophy for each of the last 13 seasons. So much for the supposed dearth of silverware in the cabinet. I was sent this collection of the manager’s quotes this season yesterday from Ivan Merc, an informed Russian follower of the Gunners. It makes for grim reading for fans who place any store on winning the domestic cups, although it will surprise nobody.

The bottom line is that Arsenal – one of the top five clubs in world football – do not have sufficient strength in depth for the manager to believe he can credibly attempt to win two of the four competitions for which actual silverware is handed out.

However, maybe this ability to rewrite history (a trait Wenger shares with his old mate David Dein) will mean a change of tack at the club. Maybe, as the club have won a trophy in Arsene’s parallel universe this season, we might be treated to an open top bus parade in the next few days. And I’m looking forward to the opportunity to have my picture taken with said trophy.

Let’s be clear about this. If the language coming out of the club was more frank and honest, more people would give the manager and the board a lot more slack. However, one imagines the view at the club is that telling the actual truth is bad for business when you are trying to sell season tickets in the middle tier starting at around £100 a game.

This assumes the manager is taking the flak for the board and that he has not had money to spend, in spite of the frequent pronouncements to the contrary. The line is – we can buy the players we need, but we don’t need them because the current bunch are good enough. The unstated truth presumably is – we can’t afford better than we have, so you’ll have to put up with them.

Financially, Arsenal have overachieved when transfer trading in isolation is taken into account. However, the club has the third highest wage bill in the Premier League. It’s a little short of Chelsea and Manchester United’s but not to the degree whereby those two clubs should have won twelve trophies between them since Arsenal last managed that achievement in 2005. So if you combine transfer spending and wages, the club are not run on quite such a shoestring as some would have you believe. A great deal of money is being spent on the players, with extended contract renewals replacing spending in the transfer market. Marouane Chamakh would have arrived last summer. However, with a £7.5m deal agreed (although obviously not in such a way that the selling party could be held to it – and someone ballsed up there), Adebayor was sold to Manchester City and Bordeaux (seeing the fee) doubled their price. Arsenal – rather than try and salvage the deal by attempting to meet them halfway – simply cut communications dead and decided to wait a year. Arsenal played for a chunk of this season without a recognised centre forward.

One thing the club have to learn pretty damn soon is that if you are perceived as one of the five richest clubs on the planet, you sometimes have to behave like it in the transfer market. Then you might actually improve your chances of winning trophies. And I do not believe that trying to win the two domestic cups will make a significant difference to finishing in the top four. It certainly didn’t seem to be an issue between 1998 and 2005, so why has it become one? Throwing away the FA Cup at Stoke in January was followed a sequence of three League matches in which eight points out of nine went by the wayside. Proof positive that resting players in the domestic cups has no beneficial effect.

Ivan Gazidis faces members of the Arsenal Supporters Trust this evening for a question and answer session. I do not see a repeat of the atmosphere when Arsene Wenger was quizzed by shareholders a year ago – an atmosphere entirely shaped by the manager’s defensiveness and outright hostility to shareholding supporters having the temerity to express an opinion about his team and his management style. Gazidis is a slick operator, and ultimately the front man for whoever on the board is calling the shots these days. The board’s public position with the manager has to be ‘back him or sack him’, but it is interesting to note that the contract extension he has reputedly been offered is only two years, meaning dismissing him will be a more affordable option than it is for Liverpool with Rafa Benitez. Gazidis isn’t going to confirm or deny anything that’s discussed behind closed doors to the supporters, and he will doubtless echo the disappointment felt by those who feel this season was an opportunity lost.

However, the board, behind closed doors if need be, should emphasise to the manager that real trophies have a beneficial knock on effect for the club in many respects, not least commercially. And that he should do his best in every one of the four the club enter each season. Wenger has made clear his disdain for the League and FA Cup. He is wrong. Chelsea are a big club who will dance around like men possessed if they win at Wembley next Saturday. And they will be gutted if they do not. Arsenal are a big club whose players are sent a clear message by the manager that some games matter and others do not. That is not the way to build consistency and focus. That is the way to become nearly men.

There was a game of football in the north London area yesterday afternoon. The club claimed there were over 60,000 in attendance. That’s a lie that history will record as fact. Arsenal’s ‘trophy’ this season is one it will not.

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