Fourth is Arsenal's limit unless Silent Stan Kroenke starts spending

Whatever their result against Bournemouth at the Vitality Stadium, Arsenal fans will not be hiring a plane to fly over the Emirates before the north London derby next Sunday, trailing a banner demanding the sacking of their manager, Unai Emery.

Supporters will not hold up placards in the stand telling Emery it is time to go. They will not hurl invective at him as he stands on the touchline. They will not turn their stadium into a swamp of toxicity, fetid with discontent and seething resentment.

Why would they, anyway? Well, how about the fact that, with a third of the campaign gone, Arsenal have made a near-identical start this season to the one they made last season under that clapped-out, washed-up, super-annuated, time-serving former manager, Arsene Wenger.

After 13 games last season under Wenger, Arsenal were fresh off a 2-0 victory over Spurs and sitting in fourth place with 25 points. As Emery's side go into Sunday's clash with Eddie Howe's team, they have 24 points after 12 games and are lying fifth.

By this stage last season, Arsenal under Wenger were again being decried as yesterday's team, little more than the outmoded vanity project of a manager whose best days were long behind him, who refused to quit, a team devoid of fight and conviction, short on guts and ready to roll over if a burly centre-back so much as breathed on one of them.

Emery, meanwhile, has been widely praised for the energy he has injected into the side, the solidity he has injected into defence, the rebirth of Alexandre Lacazette, the tough stance taken against Aaron Ramsey's wage demands and the purchase of Lucas Torreira. Yet in terms of results, there is no difference.

Don't worry. I know the war's over. I was a Wenger loyalist and even I accepted during last season that it was time for him to go, partly because the atmosphere around a fine club had become so poisonous that it was asking too much for the players to rise above it.

Nor is any of this a criticism of Emery. It is way too early to judge him, particularly in the context of the situation he inherited. His side, after all, has gone 16 games without defeat. What happened at Manchester United in the wake of the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson has shown that the transition after the loss of a great manager, who has bent the club to his will, can take years rather than months.

Still, the idea that Emery has made a great start to the season when it is almost identical to the start Wenger made in his last — and probably worst — season at the club is both curious and amusing. Sometimes, when the mob wants you out, it is simply because a man has been in a place for too long and any change will do.

The deeper concern for Arsenal fans in those near-identical starts made by Wenger and Emery is the inference that their team is now in its natural position in the Premier League. A change of manager may bring a change in style and personnel but any significant momentum is usually dependent on investment.

Which brings us to the regime of owner Stan Kroenke. Kroenke was protected by Wenger while the Frenchman was at the club. Wenger suffered all the insults because he was visible. He fronted it all up. All the abuse was aimed at him. He never shirked anything. Kroenke? Well, he's not known as Silent Stan for nothing.

But now that Wenger has gone, perhaps a few more questions will be asked about whether the reason Arsenal are forced to settle for fourth or fifth in the league is because that is pretty much what they pay for.

As it becomes apparent that Arsenal's failure to challenge for the league title is not necessarily down to the manager, more of the spotlight will fall on Kroenke.

Now that the mood music is better around the club, it is time for Kroenke to step up his investment. Traditionally, that has not been his way but, unless Arsenal at least get closer to matching the spending of Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United in the transfer market, it is hard to see their position improving.

For years, Wenger was castigated for finishing third or fourth. Without greater investment, it is looking more and more as if, under Kroenke, that is Arsenal's ceiling.

Sport becoming the real dope

The dope-testing failures uncovered by Football Leaks last week fit a disturbing pattern that is more and more evident in sport.

Increasingly, it seems, transgressions are kept secret, particularly if a big name is on the wrong end of the allegation. The instinct is to protect rather than expose.

We have got to the point where sport fears damage to its reputation and therefore its earning power, more than it fears the collapse of ethics in the ranks of its competitors. It prefers discretion. With every week, anti-doping loses more credibility.

Kubica's return closest thing to being a miracle

Four years ago, I had dinner with Robert Kubica near Chester. He was competing in the World Rally Championship but the conversation kept coming back to Formula One.

Kubica had won the Canadian Grand Prix in 2008 and was rumoured to be on the verge of signing for Ferrari when a rally accident in 2011 partly severed his right arm. That evening near Chester, he was still haunted by what he had lost.

'Last year there was a plan for me to do a test in an F1 car and I was pretty comfortable that I could do it,' he said. 'But my question was "What's next?'" The next is not possible for me because of my limitations.

'So I didn't do it because I wanted to protect myself. There was too much risk I would enjoy it and then... well, it would be like taking a knife and stabbing myself in the chest with it.'

Last week it was announced he would drive for Williams in F1 next season. His return is about as close as sport gets to being a miracle.

A degree of hypocrisy in US

It is said that in Burnley, more people wear the football shirt of their local team per head of population than in any other town that is home to a Premier League club, but I have never seen fervour for a sports team dominate a place the way the University of Alabama football team dominates Tuscaloosa.

I spent a few days in America's Deep South last week and the reach of the team known almost universally as the Crimson Tide is impressively comprehensive. If feels as if every other person is wearing at least one item of clothing with an 'A' embroidered on it.

Most high street stores, whatever they are selling, stock Crimson Tide merchandise. The football team plays in the Bryant-Denny Stadium and regularly attracts crowds of more than 100,000.

The concept of high-profile university sport is foreign to us here but one of the reasons it is so popular in the States is that it is supposed to embody a more innocent, joyful expression of the game before the lure of money ruins it all.

The idea that college football stars, the centre of all this adulation, should be paid is anathema to fans but there is a contradiction there that is hard to square.

The attachment to amateurism in the college game is understandable but when the university itself promotes such rampant commercialism around the team, it feels rather awkward.

I went to Alabama's match against The Citadel last Saturday and breaks in the action were marked by messages flashing up on the giant screen. 'Piknik: Official Mayonnaise of the Crimson Tide,' one said. 'Everwood: the Official Lumber of Alabama Athletics,' another read.

There were many more like it, and that's before we start on the merchandising and the university's superstore.

It might not have been quite enough to make Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward blush, but it was enough to make me agree with those who argue college sport is preaching one thing and practising another.