Arsenal fans behind Arsene Wenger sacking banner aren't Gooners - they're just goons

Surely one of the problems about coming out against a manager of a football club is that your comeuppance can be very swift. Just ask the Newcastle United fans who displayed the banners demanding that their club sack manager Alan Pardew, before Pardew subsequently led the club on a run of six straight victories against some decent teams, plus Tottenham Hotspur. Egg on their faces doesn't even begin to describe it.

In case you missed it, a section of Arsenal fans choose to unfurl a banner telling manager Arsène Wenger to leave the club shortly after Arsenal concluded their victory over West Brom at the Hawthorns on Saturday. As an Arsenal supporter, all that you can hope for is that these people suffer the same fate.

Whether you are for or against what they stand for, a club's supporters unfurling banners against their own club is an ugly thing to see. It's unpalatable because instinctively it goes against what being a football supporter means (the clue is in the name).

Football fans seem to be increasingly fickle and, like a twitchy and impatient club chairman firing his umpteenth manager, always seem to be on the look-out for the improbable quick fix. We know that chopping and changing managers in this way rarely brings good results, and that good things need to be built on solid foundations.

It can be argued that the paying fans at the stadium have a right to display their banner and make their point and opinion heard, and I am certainly not denying that. However, demanding that Wenger leaves the club is hardly a minority viewpoint that has been starved for attention lately. The players can't have been happy to see the banner, coming over to salute their travelling fans after a hard-fought away victory and instead being greeted with negativity.

Naff and unpleasant

As with flying planes over stadiums, it all feels a bit naff and unpleasant, and only serves to make the club something of a laughing stock. It only takes a couple of people to hold up a banner that will ensure blanket coverage and set the narrative for the next week, possibly bringing the club down and harming its image.

Not to mention the timing of the stunt, it makes you wonder; did they get that banner made up before or after Arsenal comfortably beat Borussia Dortmund and qualified for the next round of the Champions League?

Ah yes, Dortmund. While we're on the subject of Dortmund, it would be great to ask those fans holding up the banner at the Hawthorns what they think of Jürgen Klopp. It's after all impertinent to criticise something if you cannot come up with a suggestion for a proper, viable solution to that problem. And so of course, if you want to replace Wenger, then who with?

Jürgen Klopp has in recent times been the first name on the list that people come up with to replace Wenger, but yesterday Dortmund lost once again, this time going down 2-0 away to Eintract Frankfurt. Dortmund are now bottom of the table, with only four games to rectify that before the end of the hinrunde and the start of the Bundesliga winter break. Though they haven't quite started painting on bedsheets yet, Klopp faces his own problems with insurrection from his supporters.

There is no such cosy winter rest for Arsenal, who have a busy month ahead. Surprise high-flyers Southampton's visit to the Emirates stadium on Wednesday is the first of eight games that Arsenal will face until they finally get a rest after New Year's day. Here's hoping we don't see too many new banners unfurled during that time.

John Henson edits and writes for long-form football blog Proven Quality and runs a network of football news aggregation sites, including Arsenal News.

An Arsenal fan who now lives in Spain, John can be found tweeting under the Proven Quality account @provenquality.