The Finktank

There are few if any occasions I feel motivated to praise Sir Alex Ferguson, being avowedly anti-Manchester United in most things and finding the ruddy-faced, gum-chewing Scottish manager altogether not to my taste, but he has done a noble and commendable thing by agreeing to rebuke in an open letter his club's own fans for their despicable, longstanding "paedophile" chants at his great adversary, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger.

The abuse has been echoing around terraces in England for over a decade and shows no signs of dying down.

The songs are not funny or amusing, like good football chants can be, but highly offensive.

The most popular of them seem to be "Sit down you paedophile!" (delivered whenever Wenger stands up) and "There's only one Arsene Wenger/Only one Arsene Wenger/With a packet of sweets and a cheeky smile/Wenger is a f***ing paedophile."

Then there are minor variants, such as: "Wenger, wherever you may be/You are the king of child pornography/He goes in the showers with the Arsenal youth team/And while he's in there you should hear them scream."

Or this one: "The Wenger bus is comin'/And all the kids are runnin'/From London to Manchester/Wenger is a child molester." And so on. You get the picture.

But Wenger is not a paedophile.

No one has alleged he has molested children. Yet because he buys young players… you get it? Ain't it a larf!

The songs have become so entrenched in Man United fan culture (and, to a lesser extent, other clubs, especially Tottenham) that you can even find them for sale online so you can listen to them at home in the comfort of your own lounge room or on your home computer.

Manchester United, the club, has long been utterly mortified by the abuse and has appealed for its fans through virtually every means possible to desist. This has included the web, TV and now, almost as a last resort, an open letter from its manager to all club message boards, fanzines and support groups.

Ground stewards will also be given the power to physically eject fans who partake in the heckling and even confiscate season tickets.

Bravo. It's about time.

Wenger is an ornament to the English game, one of European football's great aesthetes. He has brought refinement and class to the Premier League, along with some singularly thrilling football (and footballers) over a period of 13 years during which he's won three titles and four FA Cups. He deserves the utmost respect – not this garbage.

And if Manchester United's fans can't give it to him of their own volition, they should be compelled to do so by the club with the threat of stiff penalties if they don't.

Buying a ticket to a football match is not a licence to abuse and vilify people. Good-natured banter is okay. Disgusting insults are not.

As one Arsenal blogger wrote eloquently after the Red Devils defeated the Gunners 2-1 at Old Trafford in August: "Frankly in my eyes it besmirches [Man United's fan base's] entire existence. If I'm blunt, every time I see those thousands of faces fall silent to commemorate their club's glorious dead [in the Munich air disaster] I remember how many of them will be the same faces who a few weeks later will think nothing of plumbing such vile depths.

"At the crux of it is the point that it is not the mindless few. Every club has those and there is only so much you can do. But at United it is endemic and it has been going on for years."

It has, without interruption. Now it's time for it to stop.


:: For more Fink musings on the big issues in football, check out Half-time Orange on The World Game.