James Lawton: Could Wenger at last be admitting that even he can make a mistake?

There are only so many times you can agonise over the plight of Arsenal, the team caught somewhere between the stars and the local rubbish dump. However, it was surely inevitable that Arsène Wenger yesterday appeared to be in the process of accepting finally that his appointment of William Gallas as his captain was never going to be assigned among his other works of pure football genius.

This has been apparent for some time even if it is also true that Gallas has been far from central to Arsenal's greatest problem. This has been a failure to reach an effective compromise between a way of playing that is a gift to the game and a few more practical results when inspiration has died on a still fragile vine.

Yet his ejection as team leader was still a matter of great urgency yesterday. Rarely has a gifted young team needed more the steadying touch of a football man of the world. Instead of which, sadly, they had continued to receive from their 31-year-old captain the kind of leadership that could only make you wonder quite how many bats had come hurtling into his belfry.

For Wenger, maestro manager, cult leader of all those who believe that football is something to be celebrated rather than endured, it had to be time for him to do himself the favour of calling Gallas to find out if, behind the blazing neon of his public utterances, there was really anyone at home.

The most important question was not so much about how many sandwiches William was short of le pique-nique but how far the manager had strayed from a principle that, in the end, underpins the work of all the great football men. That Wenger belongs in such company long ago ceased to be an issue, so visionary has he been in the matter of identifying great individual talent, but the apparent gap he was creating in the case of Gallas between the force of his imagination and a willingness to live with the most obvious weakness was becoming quite alarming.

Of course, Wenger has always been stubborn and no doubt an awareness of this character trait informed the former Arsenal full-back Nigel Winterburn yesterday when he declared that his old chief was unlikely to jettison Gallas for fear of creating fresh instability at the Emirates. But then what was the alternative? It could only be the continued risk of operating with someone who has tended to display the stability ranking of a bucket of nitroglycerine.

His latest faux pas while on French international duty included talking about dissension in the Arsenal dressing room, his running battle with an anonymous team-mate most commonly identified as Robin van Persie, creating the suspicion that he has also upset his hugely promising compatriot Sami Nasri, and his view that the team's young stars need urgently to learn a few warrior habits.

Exasperating as this must have been to a manager increasingly frantic to build an impression of both defiance and unity in the face of the broad streak of inconsistency running through his season, Wenger had plenty of reason to feel not so much betrayed by the player as disappointed by his own lack of prescience last spring.

Then, Gallas failed utterly a test of leadership on an afternoon in Birmingham when a potentially stunning season collapsed around the sickening injury to Eduardo da Silva. That was a blow that would have challenged the composure of any team, young or old, but the psychological damage was only intensified by Arsenal's failure to bring anything more than the callowness of untested youth to the crisis. And where was the proponent of warrior nature, of grace and steel under fire, when it had all gone wrong, when the loss of vital points had been allowed to compound the damage of Eduardo's injury? He was on the touchline displaying the histrionics of a maiden in mid-vapour.

Gallas should have gone then. The hour had come and the man most vital to the challenge of meeting it had proved wholly inadequate. You have to believe that if he had been performing for Sir Alex Ferguson he would always have been obliged to remember it as the day he signed his own Old Trafford death warrant.

Now Gallas's lack of maturity must haunt Wenger. It is another indicator that mixed in with all the brilliant perceptions, the willingness to take a chance on talent he has seen so clearly, is a refusal to act promptly when the need is so apparent. Arsenal have immense riches in the shape of Fabregas, Denilson, Nasri, Adebayor, and the currently stricken Walcott. They have the glitter of youth in Aaron Ramsey and Jack Wilshere. But where is the injection of iron? Where are the beginnings of a new Patrick Vieira? That crucial element is missing and, as long as it remains so, even Wenger's most fervent admirers must worry that they are joining him in a mere daydream.

The difficulty in the end, you suspect, is not Wenger's failure to understand a problem. He is far too intelligent for that. No, it is maybe the arrogance to believe that even if he has taken a false step, he can make it good without any admission that he may just have been wrong. You do not see this in Ferguson, the man who came fighting and bruising his way out of his version of the doldrums with two titles and the European crown. Ferguson owns up to a mistake and moves on, with a shrug of his shoulders and a face set for fresh battles.

Wenger nurses such a disaster as the appointment of Gallas. He waits, however large the pile of contrary evidence, for redemption and the sweet confirmation that even when he is wrong he has a fighting chance of making it right. Part of you can love him for that, and his concept of football not as a struggle but a liberating art: yet there is also the despair.

It is the despair born of futility, the worry that the challenge is not being taken with complete seriousness. Gallas is a talented footballer but, plainly, he is not a serious man. That he was captain of Arsenal for so long at a vital stage of the club's history has to be seen as more than an oversight by Wenger. It was the window into what may be his only weakness. Plainly, it is hard for him to accept that sometimes even he can get it wrong.

Gloom replaces Pietersen's promise of glory

We are told that Kevin Pietersen's expression is becoming progressively gloomy. This is not encouraging because as recently as three months ago, we were being told that apart from being an outstanding talent he was also a sure-fire leader of men.

To be fair, as they slide from one defeat to another against India, England are unquestionably playing the most gifted players in the world. It is also true that most of us would feel a little deflated, especially in these straitened times, having just blown a million bucks.

However, before that harshly anti-climactic circus in the Caribbean, we were also told by Paul Collingwood that all the team were looking with fired-up ambition to the challenge in India and then the chance to gain some Ashes revenge against the faltering Australians.

Yet what is there to show from such assurances? In the latest débâcle, it was only the shocking requirement of almost three hours to bowl 40 overs, almost half of them delivered by slow bowlers. Already, it seems Pietersen's brave new world of English cricket is dragging its feet.

Wilko's endorsement of Cipriani reveals ultimate hero's class

It is to Jonny Wilkinson's great credit that at a time of growing doubt in the matter he has so warmly endorsed the talent and the future prospects of his natural heir, Danny Cipriani.

For so long Wilko was enshrined as English rugby's ultimate hero – and this process did not falter even when it was plain that the accumulation of injuries, and perhaps sheer mental fatigue, was pulling him some way from the mountain top.

For him to now say so unequivocally that Cipriani, for all the tumult he has experienced in this formative stage of his career, is the future of English rugby is both generous and right. It should also be worth at least a dozen pep talks from the England coach, Martin Johnson, when Cipriani steps out against the world champion South Africans this afternoon.

He will never be Jonny Wilkinson; he isn't built that way, not in his body or his mind. But if his image is not of such certainties, there can be no questioning the range of his ability. He might just prove to be the greatest, most imaginative force English rugby has ever seen.

In reminding of this, Wilkinson's timing is, once again, restored quite impeccably.