Sometimes you feel like you are banging your head against the wall when you read some of the farcical reaction to the News of the World story that stated Arsenal are a selling club.

My co-author Alex Fynn popped something round to Arsene Wenger last night. (Myles Palmer wouldn’t get past the door by the way, so he rings Alex for gossip sometimes!) The Arsenal manager was eating his evening meal at the time, so there wasn’t much time to chat, but Alex established that the quotes in News of the World were somewhat selective and more critically that the manager has money to spend – now – without needing to sell any players. Not that I ever doubted it, although for those who rely on the News of the World to shape their world view, let me just break down the three actual statements Wenger made – even if they might have been printed out of context.

“The strategy of the club is to sell every year and to buy less expensive players.” So, Wenger’s policy is to sell a wantaway like Nicolas Anelka for £23m and replace him with a lesser player like Thierry Henry (actual cost in fact around £8.5m rather than the often quoted £10.5m). The idiot obviously doesn’t have the first clue how to build a football team.

“We manage at Arsenal to maintain all our football ambitions — national and European — while having to free up - for 17 more years - an annual surplus of £24m to pay for our stadium.” Is this news to anyone? Anyway, it’s £24m that is easily covered by the club’s rise in profits since the move from Highbury. As the News of the World itself admits, £37m in increased profits from the final season at Highbury to the first season at the new stadium. So take your choice - £13.7m profit and no debt repayment at the smaller capacity of Highbury (with ticket prices for non-corporate fans a lot higher than they are at the new stadium) or about double that after the debt repayments at Ashburton Grove. Leaving the manager with £13.5m less to spend on transfers and wages each year for those who did not want the club to move ground and borrow the necessary money to do so.

“The club’s strategy is to favour the policy of youngsters ahead of stars and to count on the collective quality of our game.” True, the club cannot compete in the market for stars with Chelsea (funded by the bottomless pockets of their owner) or Manchester United (whose owners borrow against the club to buy big names only because they intend to sell for a fat profit in the next five or so years). Arsenal do not imitate either of these business models because the club has an existing debt on a fixed asset – the stadium.

If this is such a ridiculous idea, why are Liverpool and Spurs trying to emulate it? In the short term, we cannot enter an auction for big names. But when have Arsenal ever done that anyway? The policy is to spot stars when they are young and pay substantial sums before they become huge stars. Patrick Vieira anyone? Robert Pires? Marc Overmars? Emmanuel Petit? Cesc Fabregas? All improved their reputations after coming to the club.

Anelka costs £500,000, is sold for a profit of £22.5m and is replaced by another young player who is not cheap, but has the potential to become even better. Overmars goes for £25m and Pires comes in for £6 million. Yes, Arsenal are a selling club. But often the sales are to improve the playing staff and such is the progress of players in their time at Arsenal, it’s a way of doing things that seems to work just fine, thank you. The club is run as a business rather than a rich man’s plaything and the success achieved since 1996 has been due to the talent of a manager any other club in the world would crawl over broken glass to employ.

Adebayor cost £3m and if some mug is willing to pay £30m for him, of the £27m profit, Arsenal could well break their own transfer record to replace him with someone six months older (but still to reach his peak) and in all probability more clinical in front of goal.

So a tabloid runs a story that the club might potentially break their own transfer record to acquire a new player as meaning they are up sh*t creek without a paddle. Arsène Wenger is not perfect. He will not win every trophy in which he enters his team between now and his departure from Arsenal. He has his faults.

But the club would not be in the position they are today without him. If they had won the game at Old Trafford in April, in which for long periods they played Manchester United off the park, they would have ended up Premier League champions. If you want proof that the team were unlucky that day, do you think 1,000 traveling fans would have stayed behind after the game singing for 20 minutes if Wenger’s players had lost deservedly? In spite of everything else that went against Arsenal last season, they still came mighty close to being the best team in England.

So if this is a club in crisis, I guess some of those complaining now will be throwing themselves in front of trains when their team hits a genuine slump. Wenger’s not doing anything different from what he was doing when Arsenal were winning pots that had everyone happy. The difference now is that there is an extra team competing with they and Man Utd for the title, for whom money is not an issue. And what credit do they get when they win anything? Do you want Arsenal to be like that? Please go and buy a season ticket at Stamford Bridge if you do. I don’t think there’s a waiting list for one there. And you’ll be watching a team who won as much as Arsenal last season. Make sure you enjoy watching all those expensive stars Arsène Wenger has no intention of getting into an auction for…

(Thanks to all my saner email correspondents out there for their supportive comments in the face of the crap being spouted by a few too many Arsenal fans this summer)