Paul Merson believes Arsene Wenger should have left Arsenal years ago to make way for Jurgen Klopp, Antonio Conte or Jose Mourinho.

Wenger had the opportunity to leave Arsenal twice in the last three years.

The first was after the 2014 FA Cup final, when his contract was due to expire. The second time was after the 2017 FA Cup final when, again, his contract was up.

A good number of Arsenal fans would have liked to see him leave on a high, but he opted to stay at the club.

Paul Merson believes that was the wrong decision, and thinks Wenger should have stepped aside and told the club to get a “world class” coach.

“He [Wenger] runs the club, he runs everything,” Merson said, as reported by the Daily Star.

“He could have sat there three years ago and said ‘these four managers coming up, they have left their football clubs, they’re world class managers, go and get one’.

“They’re not even managers who have been sacked, they’ve just left their club.

“Conte, Klopp, even Mourinho, world class managers.

“He should have said at the time, thinking of the club, go and get one of them.

“They won’t come up all the time.”

I daresay that few would’ve been upset had Wenger resigned and allowed Jurgen Klopp or Antonio Conte to take over.

However, Wenger doesn’t see himself as inferior to any of those managers and has a different idea of what’s good for the club.

It should also be noted that at the time those managers were available, Wenger was part way into a new contract.

Klopp was still at the Borussia Dortmund in 2014, while Conte joined Chelsea in 2016.

Jose Mourinho, meanwhile, didn’t leave Chelsea as Merson has suggested. He left by “mutual consent” in December 2015 after a terrible run of form.