James Lawton: Whinging Wenger surrenders the moral high ground

Combination of team indiscipline and pure hubris lies behind the Arsenal manager's failure to reproduce last season's championship triumph

What a pathetic picture they made, those Arsenal fans blubbing over the title their team had "thrown away". Their slobberings led you into the bleakest speculation. Did they have other lives beyond this vicarious one at Highbury and those away grounds which during the season they had brought to seething point with their bombast?

However, the spectacle of emotional self-indulgence they presented at least concentrated the mind toward getting a few things right in the wake of Manchester United's extraordinary moral triumph of an eighth Premiership title in 11 years.

Yes, moral triumph. United were not handed the title. They went out and won it because they had bigger players – in every sense – and tighter discipline.

In his disappointment, Arsène Wenger produced a litany of explanations – and excuses – and if this was a little disappointing it was perhaps no great surprise. Wenger has many brilliant qualities but grace in defeat has never figured highly among them. He concedes victory so sourly it is as though he is shaking hands with a thief. Sir Alex Ferguson has a similar disease, though there are maybe signs of a little remission – or is it just a shortage of practice?

The main planks of Wenger's concession speech were that United routinely invest 50 per cent more in their team and that a combination of injuries and unjust suspensions had seriously reduced his squad.

Yes, Ferguson did spend £30m on Rio Ferdinand after last season's failure, but at what point do you acknowledge the rights – and the benefits – of sustained conquest?

United went 26 years without winning the title before Ferguson landed his first in 1993, and when we come to review his historic reign at Old Trafford what do we imagine will be seen as his greatest achievement? His handling of the resources of Old Trafford, which were valued at no more than £13m by the club's chief shareholder, Martin Edwards, early in Ferguson's reign, or the sheer courage displayed in early exploitation of the youth system he had so brilliantly reorganised when he first came down from Aberdeen?

He was advised by Alan Hansen, no less, that young teams do not win things, but of course Ferguson – and his adviser in the little office upstairs, Sir Matt Busby – knew better. Busby had won with his Babes in '56 and '57, and his successor was about to swamp that achievement with the likes of Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Nicky Butt and the Neville brothers. It is a grotesque, and unworthy, simplification to imply, as Wenger does, that his rival's principal function has been to wave a chequebook.

The essence of Wenger's failure to reproduce last season's superb Double triumph, quite apart from United's magnificently resolute prosecution of the battle, lay in a combination of team indiscipline and, yes, it has to be said, pure hubris.

Ultimately, Wenger was guilty of whinging. His moaning about Sol Campbell's dismissal, and four-game suspension, was highly revealing. It spoke of a continued failure to recognise that Arsenal, for all their success, couldn't make their own rules – and that Campbell, despite the grotesque euphemisms both within and without Highbury, had plainly broken the rules. The complaints about injury ignores the fact that Ferguson put key players like Keane, Scholes, Ferdinand and Butt into dry dock before Christmas in the belief that he would be able to mount a sustained and withering drive for the title in the new year. So it proved, and with the bonus that a weakened United, with Phil Neville starring, over-ran Arsenal in the pivotal league match at Old Trafford.

On Sunday Wenger complained bitterly about his belief that Mark Viduka was offside when scoring the winning goal for Leeds, presumably quite forgetting the even more blatant offside goal that had been granted to Thierry Henry against United so recently.

Such outrages, we know, tend to level off and when all is dusted down it would be churlish to ignore English football's continuing debt to Wenger.

Without him, there would simply not have been a competitive Premiership these last few years. Who else but Wenger has genuinely competed with United? Sir Bobby Robson has received huge praise for his work at Newcastle, and understandably so, but he admits himself he still has some way to go to truly challenge the Old Trafford empire. At Anfield, Gérard Houllier has changed the ethos of Liverpool but still, after the spending of vast amounts of money, he looks for a winning pattern of play where it matters – at the top of the game in the Champions' League and the serious end of the Premiership. Chelsea, under the engaging Claudio Ranieri, still look for a vital touch of iron.

So we have to give unto Arsenal and Wenger what is theirs. We have to give tribute to what at times was a quite superb level of football. We have to say that Wenger has displayed authentic genius in the transfer market with his signings of Vieira, Henry and Pires, and we can sympathise with him over the misadventures of his other potentially sublime discovery, Nicolas Anelka. But none of this should be at the expense of the achievement of Ferguson and his United.

Again they have set the competitive standard. Ruud van Nistelrooy has proved himself Ferguson's signing of signings, a wonderful compendium of all those qualities the Scot most admires: heart, power and a marvellous cutting edge. With Roy Keane showing signs that he can find again some of the old whiplash authority, with Scholes recognisably Scholes, and John O'Shea fast emerging as a major player, the widely predicted revamping will probably not now happen. Of course there are residual problems. Fabien Barthez has to be replaced and with Ferguson quite explicit about the enduring depth of his European ambitions, he would ideally seek a top Italian central defender and, maybe, Harry Kewell to play wide on the left.

Beckham? It will not have thrilled Ferguson's heart, be sure, to see that the picture of the England captain dominated all other images on yesterday's sport and, in some cases, front pages. This was after the celebrity king's peripheral contribution to the season, and his dropping from some of the most important games, most pointedly the second leg against Real Madrid and the vital visit to Highbury. But what can Ferguson do about this? He can simply continue to restate the thundering message of those team selections which excluded Beckham. It is that at United nobody gets a free ride and that mere celebrity will never be a passport to the most successful team in the history of English football.

In this sense Ferguson's triumph was indeed moral rather than financial. On one level, he won another title. On another, he proclaimed the classic truth that in football, like life, nothing can be taken for granted, and winning, maybe, least of all.

Brooking's brilliance revealed in Di Canio

When, or should it be if, Trevor Brooking returns to the broadcasting booth the old anodyne act will surely just not do. We have seen Brooking immersed in the passions, and the realities of the game these last few weeks and the redefining of his nature has been huge.

He has been required to be decisive in more than mere words, and his handling of the crisis of West Ham has been striking both for its spirit and its wisdom.

His decision on Paolo Di Canio last Saturday was especially brilliant. Di Canio was sent on against Chelsea long after the fine texture of an impressive team effort had been established. Di Canio's talent, almost exclusively reserved for the benefit of doting home fans at Upton Park, is to perform, from time to time and generally in optimum circumstances, extraordinary deeds.

On Saturday he made one significant contribution – and it was a goal which may preserve West Ham's Premiership life. Had Di Canio stayed on the bench, Brooking may have achieved the same result of a goal which reflected his team's superior commitment and play. But then he may not have, and Di Canio's insidious playing to the gallery would no doubt have worked against Brooking as it did so relentlessly in the case of the stricken Glenn Roeder.

The truth is that Di Canio's goal did not affect one iota any reasonably considered view of the Italian's worth to any club seeking consistent success built on a well ordered team. Somebody who weeps for the departure of Di Canio is in need of a few tears himself.