By that standard, everything is rosy in the garden from an Arsenal point of view. But then should Arsenal be judged to that standard with their revenue streams and the huge cash reserves in the bank that they have available to spend.
I think fans are right to query that, considering they pay the highest season ticket prices in England and are heavily contributing to this.
Every other club of Arsenal's stature in football are judged to a certain standard. Why shouldn't they?
The success of Van Gaal at United won't be judged against simply doing better that Newcastle, Sunderland and Villa.
Why should Wenger be any different to any other manager? I see him to be judged like anyone else.
Saying that doesn't diminish his previous great achievements. That Wenger was as good as you get but this is not the same manager that I see now. I see players over the last number of years, that he wouldn't have deared even looked at in his successful years. Back then there was no messing with Wenger, there was a ruthless streak where he didn't want to give Ferguson an inch. Any player he signed that performed poorly or he got wrong, he didn't hesitate to freeze them out of the team or sell them on(eg: Jeffers, Richard Wright). As time went by he developed a stubborn streak and consistently showed faith in players who were continually failing to perform in the hope of proving everyone wrong(Senderos, Almunia, Denilson, Eboue in midfield, etc.). His record got a lot more mixed in the transfer market( Park, Santos, Benayoun, Squillaci, Chamakh, Podolski, Silvestre, Debuchy, Gervinho, Sanogo, Flamini,). I also have huge doubts about Gabriel and Chambers stepping up to the plate and who costed over £25m between them. Benitez got huge criticism for this at Liverpool and yet a word is rarely ever said about Wenger in relation to this.
He used to sell players at the right time with Vieira, Petit, Overmars, Ljungberg and Henry springing to mind. All at the right ages. Nowadays he resigns a guy in Flamini at that age and who thinks can contribute significantly to the team. He gave Arteta a year extension whose legs are gone and is too slow for defensive midfield(not that he ever was one).
His transfer isn't as coherent and clear as some think. He wouldn't even go further than 40m and a pound for Suarez and then a few weeks later pays more for Ozil who is an inferior player to Suarez. Wenger tries to be clever in the transfer market by putting his own prices on players, but he doesn't dictate the nature of the transfer market as a whole.
I find nothing admirable about many aspects these days of Wenger's transfer policy. All this and his dithering does is cost Arsenal signing players of quality and therefore doesn't give them the best opportunity of competing for the League and Champions League. Cahill, Mata, Suarez, Alonso, Schwarzer, are just some of the examples. Scouts and agents are known to not like dealing with Wenger on transfers.
I respect your opinion, I have a toon friend myself who always says the same to me as your good self.