Boring, boring Arsenal. Well, according to Jose Mourinho anyway. Seriously, we’re going to do this? We are going to take the manager who, more than any other, has refused to compromise his high-minded principles for close to two decades and pretend he’s the dull one?

Arsene Wenger? Dreary? Come on, even mind games need some root in reality. According to Mourinho, Arsenal won the Community Shield on Sunday by shutting up shop. ‘The best team lost and the defensive team won,’ he sneered.

He accused Arsenal of leaving their philosophy in the dressing room and putting 10 players behind the ball. He said Chelsea played with initiative and Arsenal on the counter-attack. He sounded a little worried, actually; protesting too much.

Jose Mourinho claims Arsene Wenger and Arsenal won the Community Shield by shutting up shop

Wenger made no effort to shake hands with Chelsea boss Mourinho (left) after their Community Shield clash

Arsenal did nothing of the sort, of course — but what if they did? What if Wenger decided that this season, yes, he was going to take a more pragmatic approach in order to land Arsenal’s first title since 2004? You know something? He’s entitled.

Arsene, old son, have this one on us if you want. Bore on. We’ll turn a blind eye. It is 19 seasons now of trying to win football matches beautifully.

That’s the hardest way. Just about every other manager has compromised when necessary and those who didn’t were invariably working with bigger budgets than Wenger.

Indeed, the occasions when Arsenal’s aim was to win by any means necessary are so rare that they can be remembered and counted.

Beating Manchester United on penalties in the 2005 FA Cup final; a run of 10 consecutive games without conceding on the way to the 2006 Champions League final; winning away at Manchester City last season.

The 2005 final aside, even those games were hardly spoiling exercises. Arsenal only had 35 per cent of possession at the Etihad Stadium on January 18, but still had nine shots at goal (to City’s 12) and three on target (to City’s four).

A seemingly delighted Wenger arrives for the annual English Premier League managers meeting on Tuesday

With the Community Shield already won after beating rivals Chelsea, Wenger looked in buoyant mood

The change that day came from Francis Coquelin playing as a genuine defensive midfielder rather than Wenger using an attacking player, detailed with putting tackles in as his ancillary role.

For years, the criticism of Arsenal has been that the team lack steel. Now, if Wenger applies it, he is derided as negative. He can’t win.

Wenger is a smart man. He will have known that Arsenal needed variation in their game all along. In 2007-08, when Emmanuel Adebayor enjoyed his best season for Arsenal, scoring 30 goals in 48 matches, Wenger admitted the striker gave him something different: a target man.

If Arsenal were under pressure, they could always bang it up to the big fella. Olivier Giroud can be that type of player, too, holding up the ball with his back to goal.

And Wenger has never been averse to having a giant goalkeeper, a big effing German at the back or Patrick Vieira. When Arsenal were at their invincible best, there was plenty of muscle in the team.

It is almost as if, of late, Wenger has spent too long trying to win an ideological war. The more Arsenal have been derided as soft, the more determined Wenger has been to show he can succeed without compromise.

Wenger and his Arsenal player celebrate Sunday's Community Shield triumph at Wembley on Sunday

Yet he can’t. Not over the season. Arsenal are the first team to retain the FA Cup since Chelsea in 2010, but the title requires greater resilience.

Wenger’s best Arsenal teams still had a sprinkling of George Graham’s cussedness, just as Carlo Ancelotti’s Double-winning 2009-10 campaign at Chelsea was never entirely free of the influence of Mourinho.

The idea that Mourinho can call out Wenger for being negative is hilarious anyway. Mourinho is not the one-dimensional, dour strategist of popular imagination, but he is certainly one who knows when to stop taking unnecessary risks, and is not afraid to do that whether for 10 minutes, an entire game or for four months, if the circumstances demand.

Perhaps the real reason he accused Wenger of rejecting his principles is the hope that he can bait his rival into abandoning pragmatism for more useless beauty.

We must hope not. No Wenger team will ever be dull, but a little more realism may give the man his fourth Premier League title.

And if any manager has earned the right to try to win that whatever damn way he pleases, it is him.

FARAH FEUD IS ONLY THE HALF OF IT

Long-distance nuisance Andy Vernon hints he has not been picked for the Great Britain team at the World Athletics Championships because of his continuing feud with Mo Farah. Yes, and understandably so.

The official line is that UK Athletics do not think Vernon can finish top eight in Beijing or make an impression at the Olympics next summer. Considering that he isn’t in the top 50 athletes for the 5,000 metres this year and just scrapes into the top 30 in the 10,000m, they have a point.

Yet, equally, why should UKA include an inferior athlete whose presence may have a negative effect on their main medal chance, Farah?

‘Certain people don’t want me in the team,’ Vernon sniffed.

Indeed. And that certain person is more than justified in having his wishes placed first.

Andy Vernon (centre) believes his feud with Mo Farah (right) is the reason he has not been picked for the Great Britain team at the World Athletics Championships

BOURNE STUPIDITY

The money that comes into football these days means most fan protests can be taken with a pinch of salt. The demand is for the cheapest tickets but the best, most expensive players, too.

While lapping up the advantages the TV money brings, some moan about the loss of traditional kick-off times.

Occasionally, though, there is a decision so inconsiderate and unthinking that it rises above these contradictions.

Moving Newcastle’s match at Bournemouth to 12.45pm on November 7 is one such call.

Either the Premier League should have counselled strongly against it, or BT Sport should have been more sensitive. It is the longest trip in the division — 359 miles — and the fans should have been the priority.

RIO MAKING A KILLING

Olympic sailors and rowers may be competing in dirty water in Rio de Janeiro next summer but at least they have a choice. Not so the horses.

Nobody asks the equine competitors whether they like their stable or are prepared to risk illness or worse for a gold medal. Yet two horses at Deodoro Horse Park, which will be used for the Games, have tested positive for glanders this summer.

Glanders is an incurable respiratory illness usually picked up through contaminated food or water. Nodular lesions form in the lungs and ulcers in the upper respiratory tract. The acute form kills within days, the chronic form within months. Survivors act as carriers.

The last reported case in Britain was in 1928 and in the United States in 1945. Olympic performance directors are so worried about equine biosecurity issues in Rio that special briefings are being arranged.

The situation is under control, say the hosts, but they are accused of suppressing news of the outbreak for several months.

It is disgraceful that this should be a concern so close to the event. Athletes can choose whether to risk Rio’s risible hygiene, but horses follow blindly.

Not for the first time, the IOC should be ashamed.

This season’s change to the offside rule is overdue. It was ludicrous a player in an offside position could move as if to play the ball, distracting the goalkeeper, but not be deemed in play unless he touched it. That now reverts. Any motion towards the ball will make a player active.

This is the beginning of a return to the principle of interfering with play, which should never have been abandoned.

The offside rule change has been introduced for the new season and could lead to more goals being ruled out

If there is one idea that has run its course, it is surely awarding major sports events to repressive regimes in order to influence political change. Greater freedom was supposed to follow the gift of the 2008 Olympics to Beijing. Instead, according to Human Rights Watch, it was a ‘catalyst for abuse’. In 2008, China ranked 167th on the press freedom index; last year it was 175th.

Hosting the Sochi Winter Games in 2014 did not stop Russia mounting an invasion of Ukraine — and now China have been rewarded again, with the 2022 Winter Olympics, despite an Amnesty International estimate that approximately 500,000 citizens are under detention without forthcoming trial. ‘We will honour all commitments,’ President Xi Jinping said of the Games, although he could start by setting some trial dates. Don’t hold your breath.

AND WHILE WHERE AT IT...

‘I’ve been watching the Super 15,’ England rugby coach Stuart Lancaster told me, drily, when we met in June, ‘and every player who catches my eye seems to come from Fiji.’

Lancaster is under no illusions about the challenge England face at the Rugby World Cup, having ended up in a group with Wales and Australia and only two progressing. Fiji are also in Group A and are England’s opponents for the opening game on September 18.

It was the Pacific Nations Cup final this week. Fiji 39 Samoa 29. That’s three of those on the turn they have won. If England get knocked out and the World Cup falls flat, having held the draw and organised the seeds three years in advance, the IRB only have themselves to blame.

England may have home advantage, and a tough schedule will afford no shelter for Lancaster if his side fall early, but the strength of Group A by comparison is ridiculous — and was avoidable with a later draw bringing fairer seeding.

Queens Park Rangers manager Chris Ramsey has announced that Charlie Austin and Leroy Fer are available. Ramsey needs to sell before he can buy. It is often the way at relegated clubs — yet why the delay?

Why is Ramsey’s squad still up in the air days before the season starts? Rangers will have known of the financial limitations in the Championship on May 10 when they went down. Yet 13 weeks later Ramsey is still in the dark. Rangers didn’t know how to buy, now they don’t know how to sell. It’s why they are where they are.

QPR duo Charlie Austin (left) and Leroy Fer (right) are both available, according to manager Chris Ramsey

Daniel Sturridge is a fine player, but, ultimately, Brendan Rodgers could not trust him. Not as a goalscorer, no problems there. Quite simply, Sturridge could not be relied upon to stay fit.

Liverpool were left with no option but to invest £32.5million in Christian Benteke. If that reduces Sturridge’s opportunities it is unfortunate, but understandable.

Jack Wilshere’s career appears to be heading in the same direction at Arsenal. He will miss the start of the season and may not be available until mid-September with an ankle injury. This follows on from the last campaign when there were growing signs he was no longer a guaranteed starter, even when fit.

Arsenal have had to make do without Wilshere so often that he cannot be considered a regular. This latest setback, when so much is expected of him, will only reinforce that attitude.

Wilshere is a lovely player, but he is absent too often for a coach to plan around him.

Jack Wilshere and Daniel Sturridge have both struggled with injuries and unavailable for long spells

Lamine Diack — there’s a good anagram in there somewhere — the president of the IAAF, is stepping down later this month and not a day too soon.

Instead of an explanation for the hundreds of dubious blood tests recorded, and passed over, on his watch, he described the allegations against his organisation as a joke. He said something similar in 2011, when accused of receiving £25,000 from sports marketing company ISL. The money, he said, was a gift because his house had burned down, although Issa Hayatou of Cameroon — now head of the Confederation of African Football — also received £25,000 and his house remained intact. Maybe he got it for something else — a landscaping issue, or some new goldfish.

Of course, one rogue blood test is no guarantee of doping. There can be justifications. But dubious readings on this scale, when it is suggested one in seven athletes have recorded suspicious numbers, should have at least spurred an IAAF investigation.

Just as Russia hides behind the specious accusation of a smear campaign when challenged, Diack’s reaction to hard data is a series of vague, glib rebuttals.