Now that autumn is well and truly with us and there is a nip in the air, that can only mean one thing – Arsene Wenger will get his coat out.

He won’t be the only one. In fact, we’ll likely see every manager in the league don an outer garment as winter draws ever closer, but it is only Arsene Wenger’s that garner’s regular column inches each and every season.

Arsenal's French manager Arsene Wenger (L) looks on from the touchline during the English Premier League football match between Watford and Arsenal at Vicarage Road Stadium in Watford, north of London on October 17, 2015. AFP PHOTO / PAUL ELLIS
It’s only a coat AFP PHOTO / PAUL ELLIS

If you missed the game against Watford you’ll have missed it making an appearance as he put it on and the hood got caught down his back, a problem anyone who has ever dealt with hoods will tell you is a regular occurrence. That Sky were able to go directly to him just as he was putting it on shows you that they were watching him and waiting to deliver this essential information to people who pay a fortune every month for their football coverage.

Then it was the turn of Match of the Day pundits to remind us that he used to have trouble with his zip while showing us the hood clip. Look online today and I’m sure the Mirror won’t be the only ones to be running a piece about the ‘incident’.

It wasn’t as if the game was boring and without points worthy of discussion but it seems that pundits no longer care that they are supposed to be footballing experts, paid handsome sums to explain the finer points of the game to us. It’s the same with ‘journalists’ from the major papers who are in a privileged position that gives them access to players, managers and information that us mere mortals can only dream of.

And what do they do with it? They squander it in order to talk about a man in his 60’s putting on a big coat mid-October on a cold Saturday afternoon.

But none of this answers the question of ‘why’ they are so obsessed with it? Is it meant to be funny? Is that what laughing at pensioners is now? I struggle to come up with any other explanation because it’s not informative unless you need lessons on putting on winter-wear.

It isn’t relevant to anything.

Then again, neither is much of what passes as ‘news’ these days.