Of the many assumptions, theories and supposed conspiracies swirling around Arsenal ahead of a match tonight that could quite conceivably decide Arsene Wenger’s future, one of the more ludicrous is that there is no one willing simply to tell their manager when his time is up.

That’s right, Stan Kroenke, a man estimated by Forbes to be worth $8.1 billion, who has owned major American sports teams for more than 20 years, is somehow so in thrall to Wenger that he could not bring himself to take the ultimate decision.

This is the same Kroenke, remember, who has just moved an entire NFL franchise 5,420 miles from St Louis back to Los Angeles because he deemed it beneficial to his franchise’s long-term chances of success. You can imagine how that went down in St Louis.

The point here is not to get into that particular issue but to understand how Kroenke operates and what that tells us about Arsenal’s biggest decision for a generation.

After all, despite everything we relentlessly hear from fans, pundits, club legends and journalists, and regardless even of what current board members, executives and players think, Wenger’s future will depend ultimately on the opinion of only one man.