Arsenal’s captains have traditionally been long time servants of the Club. Players like Terry Neill, Pat Rice and Tony Adams were all essentially one club men who came through the ranks and had already earned the respect of the fans and their fellow pros before being awarded the captaincy. Either that or they were just ‘stand out’ captaincy material, as was the case with Tone. More recently both Vieira and Henry had at least both played at the club for a number of seasons before being given the captains armband.

Even Frank McLintock had to wait. Frank joined us from Leicester in 1964 but didn’t get to become captain until 1967. The only player I can recall joining the club from another team and being promoted to the captaincy soon after was the late, great Joe Mercer. He joined us aged 32 in 1946 and went on to win two League Championships and the FA Cup. Joe even commuted from Liverpool but perhaps he is the exception that proves the rule.

There has hardly been a massive groundswell of support for Bill and quite a lot a questioning of Le Boss’s sanity regarding the appointment. Popular Gooner opinion seems to indicate that the only sane reason for giving Gallas the job is to stop him mouthing off to the press about what is wrong at Arsenal. Gilberto and Toure were clearly the people’s choice, but then we the people don’t really have a clue what is going on behind the scenes do we? We don’t know who the players favoured for the role, neither can we be sure who would make the best team leader and for what reasons.

Gallas certainly wouldn’t have been my choice but if he lifts another couple of trophies by the end of the season I doubt if I’ll be complaining come next May.