Loving Arsene Wenger yet also wanting him to leave the club is no contradiction.

I’m a part of a generation of Arsenal fans who grew up with Arsene Wenger. He’s the only Arsenal manager I’ve known.

I was three years old when he became manager of the club. I couldn’t even pronounce his name when he won his first double.

By the time I took a serious interest in football and started following the club religiously, Wenger had made history. He introduced the best of Arsenal to my life.

It’s impossible for me not be full of admiration for the man.

I’d love nothing more for Wenger to win another Premier League title at the club, even if reality suggests that’s unlikely. As a fan, it’s perfectly possible to wish him and his team every success while simultaneously acknowledging the reasons why that success won’t happen.

I’ll be the first to admit that Wenger knows more about football than I ever will, but his team no longer satisfies me as a fan.

It’s not just about the trophies – although those FA Cup wins were fantastic and are always welcome – but being excited about watching the team. At their best, Arsenal can still thrill like the best of them, but that best comes maybe once or twice a month.

In the meantime, they’re floundering from game to game, making the same mistakes and losing for the same reasons. For some reason, nobody is doing anything about it.

That’s a simplistic view of it but one I have to take because the evidence is mounting against Wenger.

We used to be able to externalise our problems. The competition was richer than us, and we never had the luck to compete. Yet the club has invested hundreds of million of pounds in players for little progress. Now it faces losing it’s two best players like it’s 2011 all over again.

It’s a maddening cycle that everyone wants to break free from but nobody is united on how to do it. Change the manager, change the players, change the board, change everything; it’s a situation that encourages you to take a side and for fans to bicker about what’s best.

Passions run high, tempers flare and people inevitably cross the line.

Unfortunately, there are negative implications whatever stance you take.

I believe that Arsenal need a new manager but in expressing that opinion I’m in danger of being called ungrateful and disrespectful, not just by fellow fans, but by pundits in the media, too.

Admiration for his past achievements shouldn’t blind us from the fact that football is a dynamic game. What worked before doesn’t necessarily work now, and Wenger isn’t the only one struggling with this. Just look at Carlo Ancelotti’s time at Bayern Munich or Jose Mourinho’s time at Chelsea and Manchester United.

That view can be put across constructively. I don’t need to call Wenger a dinosaur, or an old man, or any of the other derogatory labels some fans give him. There’s no need to liken him to a dictator. Wenger doesn’t need to have won x number of trophies or purchased some of the finest players to grace the club to earn that bare minimum level of respect.

In the end, Wenger is a manager of a football team I like. I want that football team to be the best it can be, for my own pleasure and entertainment, and to that end, it needs a new manager.

It needs some stimulation from somewhere.

Asking Wenger to give up his job to achieve that is an entirely selfish position to take, but one I’m going to because I can’t go anywhere else. I’m not about to go and support Manchester City.

It’s at a point now where I truly feel it’d best for Wenger to leave the club.

He deserves to be remembered and appreciated for all the good things he did for the club, but that won’t happen if he remains in charge. He’s far too divisive a figure for that to happen.

I wouldn’t celebrate him leaving, but I’d welcome it so I could reflect on what’s been done and anticipate what’s to come, whether it’s a bright future or more mediocrity.