ARSENAL'S FUTURE BRIGHTER THAN UNITED'S

What of Arsenal, the team who fell so badly, so disconsolately, the least sentimental elements of the bookmaking trade have already made them odds-on (10-11) to go through next season without landing any of four available trophies? For the foreseeable future are they really at the end of their road? No.

Though it is fashionable, and perhaps unavoidable, to take aim at the embattled Wenger, it also shows a shocking failure to understand that for many reasons, including the one made by Ferguson that it is not a time of extraordinary development in any club in Europe, there are different ways of measuring success in today's game.

One of them is Arsenal's only way of comforting themselves at this moment as they stand so forlornly on the jetty while the rest of English football's elite march into today's Champions League draw. But it is not a bad one; indeed, some of his rivals might kill for the right.

It is to ask a question that has never been more important than in this age of grossly inflated transfer market values and the signal failure of a club as mighty as Barcelona to build on the foundation of extravagant talent. Who could Wenger possibly envy as he reviews the progress of young players who will be at the core of his team for at least half a decade?

The answer could not be more emphatic. There is nobody in English football who has stored such riches. He has been as larcenous as he has been superbly acute in assembling such lion cubs as Cesc Fabregas, Denilson, Mathieu Flamini, Emmanuel Adebayor, Gäel Clichy, Armand Traoré and Johan Djourou.

These are not objects of speculation. They are keepers and they will grow up, you could put the mortgage on it, in the soaring Emirates Stadium which for a while curbed Wenger's spending powers but now underpins the club's future.

It is the most spectacular pure achievement in English football since Ferguson brought through his production line of young talent in the mid-Nineties. Back then Alan Hansen declared that you don't win with kids, but of course Ferguson did, as Sir Matt Busby did before him. Everything depends on the kids.

Whatever you think of some of his recent behaviour, it would be absurd to say that Wenger has been left behind. In a field which even the front-running Ferguson admits is not exactly loaded with distinction, he has lost an important race. But then it will resume in the autumn, when the shrewd betting has to be that Arsenal will be that much more experienced - and handily placed.