Matt Windmill seeks to separate the men from the boys in today’s guest post.
After hard fought back-to-back 1-0 victories, is it just possible the Banner and Black Bin Bag faction now have their Arsenal back?
Perhaps we can look forward to another stellar season like the one that the 1994-95 vintage squad delivered us? Isn’t this what the BW Brigade want? (Banner W**kers for those wondering).
A 12th placed finish in the league, which at one point actually looked like it could turn into a relegation scrap, were it not for a late run. George Graham sacked after a bungs scandal and Paul Merson missing for three months while he underwent treatment to combat drug and gambling addictions.
Sounds great doesn’t it?
It got me thinking though, where were the banners and protests then?
Where were the supporters’ groups telling us what to think, telling us what we want, and then representing ‘our’ views to the club? Where was the booing in the stadium of such performers as Ian Selley, David Hillier and the howls of frustration at wing wizard Glenn Helder? If the vocal minority are moaning and whinging today, back then they must have been apoplectic with rage!
Or maybe there is another possibility.
Perhaps they only started supporting Arsenal once the good times had actually returned?
Perhaps it was only after Arsene Wenger arrived and revolutionised English football – and more importantly – our great club.
Transforming The Arsenal into one of the top 10 clubs in Europe, doing away with the “Boring, boring” Arsenal tag and producing the most exciting brand of football the English game has ever seen.
Overseeing the construction of arguably the best football stadium in European football.
Whilst consistently challenging for honours at the top of the English game.
How happy the BWs must have been in 2004, with the delivery of an historic unbeaten season, by a team capable of beating any opposition, right across the globe.
You see – as any glory hunting supporter will tell you – it is easy to follow a team when they are winning. Just ask the majority of Manchester United supporters.
But the arrival of Russian and Arab billions has changed the landscape forever, and made it extremely difficult to stay at the top. Surely anyone with a smidgeon of intelligence can work that out.
Can’t they?
No, not the BW brigade!
Of course, they well know only ridicule would come their way if they were to actually change their choice of team to support. But the anger that seeps from their pores, manifests as screamed abuse of frustration. The logic of this ruinous mentality culminates in the ridiculous notion of them putting themselves up as those who somehow know better than one of the greatest managers in our club’s proud history.
Where am I going with this, you ask?
Well at the start of this piece I suggested, with tongue firmly in cheek, that the BW’s now have their Arsenal back, but do you know what Arsenal I want back?
I want the Arsenal back without them.
Perhaps our lean spell, trophy wise, has a silver lining?
Perhaps it separates the men from the boys. Perhaps we will see a return to having only those fans who are there just to support? Those who smile just at the thought of walking up to The Emirates with its ever improving, ever impressive décor and its carpet-like pitch.
And one of the best teams in Europe gracing it.
That’s what I want – comebacks from 4-0 down, 7-3 victories, attacking football that, back in that 94-95 season, I dared to not even dream about.
I don’t want my Arsenal back, because it has, and never will, leave me. I fully intend to make the most of every single game I go to.
And hey, if I am lucky, the BW brigade will be nowhere to be seen.
Positively Arsenal 
…that was all about the football club, you understand, and on no account should be taken as a comment about other Blackburn related people. Some of whom are apparently outstanding.
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“It got me thinking though, where were the banners and protests then?”
I ask myself the same thing, since most of the most negative bastards claim to have been born in a house just a stones throw away from Highbury. .
The way I see it, these people are upset that we’re not keeping up with the Mancs or the Chavs. They may tell you: “Oh, but we don’t want to spend too much,” only to argue the merits of handing the reigns over to the fat Uzbek. Don’t be mistaken, the BW want a full and complete transformation of the club into a giant, soulless blob which can buy titles. Which is fine if it weren’t for the fact that these are the same fuckers who behave as if their measly sixty pounds should give them a seat in the club’s board of directors. You want your voice to be heard or do you want a chairman like Abrahamovich who hires Rafa Benitez despite the support’s hatred of him?
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The logic of this post is brilliant. Well done Matt! So, a question to middle-of-the-roaders Shotta talks about, that cannot be answered: “which Arsenal is it that you support, or did you ever support, if you are unhappy with the way things are going”?
The pre-Wenger vintages, when there were no “entitled supporters”, we did our best, quite well most of the time, sometimes very well? The Invincibles (created by Wenger) that set a record unlikely to ever be matched? Or the post-Invincibles, the one you are so miserable about, but playing delightful football every season at the top of Europe?
The answer of course is, “I support Arsenal that doesn’t exist in any reality but one that my entitlement delusions say should exist”, or “I support this Arsenal, love them, always supported Wenger … BUT it must be different (insert entitlement delusions bla bla)”. Or, I support the Arsenal Invincibles, and um, any team just like them called Arsenal.
You couldn’t make it up, as they say!
Hello FunGunner! Team Spirit! Very good to see you again.
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I am going to the football tomorrow, to watch Arsenal
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That is also brilliant ZP and quite funny.
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Arsenal, Arsenal, Arsenal….Arsenal, Arsenal, Arsenaaaall…Arsenal, Arsenal, Arsenal…Arsenal…ARSENAL
OO..OO..OOtobe…OOtobea…Gooner!
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Poor Wellbeck. SAF called him “unplayable”. Yikes. Was he? Really? Or did he have a good game? I guess it’s bit of gamesmanship at Ronaldo.
Tomorrow, it’s stand up comedy at the arts centre in the afternoon, then dash over to the bar to watch the game in time, and a room full of Arsenal crazies. Can’t wait.
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What is funny is a bunch of guys unfurling a banner abusing their team, likely thinking it represents many supporters and so deciding to be ballsy about it (“time someone stood up and said what everyone is thinking” etc), and getting a punch in mouth.
Ouch!
Not the mouth, the futility.
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I am going to start selling blow up dolls I got from a mate in Soho. Painted em red and white. Dead cheap. People can stick them on the empty seats. Not quite finished them yet, nearly there though. I am trying adapt them so that something really horrible comes out of their bums..as a present to those who were not sitting there.
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What on earth could Frank mean … “Blackburn related people”?
Oh … um … oh, I see …
Andrei Arshavin forever!
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“I think I will be good in the last two months of the season,” Diaby told Arsenal Player. “At the same time, when you come back, it’s not easy because you’re not fit enough.
“The players and the game reach such a level of physicality that it is difficult to catch. But I think [my spell out is] good for the end of the season.”
Abouuuuuuuuuuuuuu.
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I wonder when I’ll see my Arsenal again in the flesh? Soon, soon, god willing.
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Yes soon, ZP, we need supporters like you in the stadium
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You know what I don’t miss? People talking about US teams (what sport they referred to I never had any idea) as a way of saying something meaningless about Arsenal.
Amongst other things.
Once again, thanks you guys!
Yesterday,as an aside, was International Book Giving Day. I hope you remembered to show true love… give a book to someone who really needs it!
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How do you tell if someone needs a book, ZP, lank hair, dry skin, twitch, haunted look in their eyes?
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They go to a rural school in Zimbabwe, and quite a few other places, which last saw a “library book” back in the day when such things were considered more important than the ingenious ways a government can invent to steal from its own people.
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Fucking hell! It has just come to my attention that there existed sometime in the past an unpopular beat combo by the name of Tony Blackburn and the Rovers…
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I am chastened, ZP. How do we send books to them?
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another simply wonderful post aqnd i 100% 100% 100% agree, unfortunatly sucess attracts the unwanted and the building of the new stadium let them in, with the many new types of social media giving them a voice and the scribes of capitalism brainwashing the weak.It is now up to us freedom fighters to deliver the real ARSENAL back to the masses………carry on the good fight.
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By rights, they could say “being threatened shouldn’t preclude us from taking it.” Nobody should feel threatened for voicing their opinion and it’s not really offensive, is it? It’s a different point of view, it’s one I don’t personally agree with and would rather not see, but we’re all adults, we can live with it. I think it’s counterproductive to lump people into factions too, it just pollutes the debate to associate, say, Highbury Spy with the banner guys. They don’t know each other, people’s opinions are more nuanced than that. Even if the Spy does speak a load of old shit.
Knysna, I’m not sure how many different ways I can explain this to you, I didn’t say you couldn’t criticise the guys with the banner. You’re perfectly welcome to. Nobody should be abash about being scrutinised. That’s the way the world works, you put an opinion out there, it’s there to be scrutinised. That’s a positive thing, to have what you think held up under a microscope. If you’re mature enough to debate it, you learn a hell of a lot. Either your opinion is a very good one and you teach someone else something in the exchange, or else someone has a better angle and you learn something., That’s how you grow as a human being and how society grows.
You need to stop thinking so polemically, lumping everyone into groups. “Positive brigade” “anti brigade” it’s all rubbish really. Be a person, listen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqESAufUAMQ Chris Rock puts it brilliantly here.
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Little Dutch February 15, 2013 at 10:59 am
ok for the democratic society part but still this is not a reason for that insult of a banner. it shows a serious lack of respect.
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Hello, ZimPaul!
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Well, that’s difficult I suppose Frank, but I immediately appreciate the sentiment.
Little Dutch, don’t you find it more than slightly odd, punches aside which is a “nothing” really, a scuffle with tempers flared, that fans publicly denigrate their team, in the context of Arsenal’s footballing pedigree? You want us to look at the “big picture”, but turn that around, think of other sports, teams, public events even. Why not the national team of England, at its home, Wembley? I personally think them borderline insane.
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Tim ,you are in the wrong place if you want middle of the road ,listing fence sitters.
This place is specifically for ultra positive support for the team ,players and manager.
Have a look in our archives for this”No Place For Faint Hearts; A Meerkat Comes Home”
We have no time for fence sitting liberals here.
As for the Banner men,as I said recently on Twitter “If you are going to hang your arse out ,don’t be surprised if someone fucks you”
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It wasn’t a nothing scuffle. I know the guy that administered the punch and he told me he’d done out minutes after the game. He’s a good guy usually so I don’t like calling him out, but it was one sided. It wasn’t a scuffle. He hit the kid.
Yes, it doesn’t sit comfortably with me at all, like I said. I think it’s all a bit “Chelsea” truth be told. But I still think they have the right to do it so long as it’s not insulting (and I don’t just mean, “I want Wenger to stay therefore I’m insulted.” I mean, really insulting, in language that is genuinely acidic and confrontational). Like I said, the best thing to do is ignore it in this particular situation and it goes away. Otherwise it becomes a big thing, then you see more of it happen.
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Its a disgrace that we are not on TV tomorrow.
I want my license fee back!
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It’s not about being liberal, middle of the road, or fence sitting. I wouldn’t have been blogging for 7 years if I was an advocate of any of those things 🙂 This is what I mean, labelling everybody just gets you and the person you’re communicating with nowhere. It takes you to a point where you just shut yourself off and stop listening and you become isolated. Like a cult.
A.A. Milne had a good saying for this, “The third rate mind is happy thinking with the majority. The second rate mind is happy thinking with the minority. The first rate mind is happy when it is thinking.”
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I actually love when people defend their corner. I find that if you stand in the middle you are not really standing for anything because you cannot agree and disagree with the same thing, its really hard to do. Now, I am not for punching anyone but neither am I for someone being an idiot and bringing problems on themselves for no reason. Why on earth do they think it a good idea to go to Arsenal matches with that banner, knowing full well that many will not take kindly to it, or maybe they thought people would? There are many important things in life in which banners like that would be respected but in terms of football and dealing with the greatest manager in the history of the game… well, they are very stupid and need to get a life.
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What are you talking about, Little Dutch? Stop fucking wittering, man.
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Nobody should be abash about being scrutinised.
i dont agree. it depends who is scrutinising, what knowldege or experience he holds on the subject and what his/her motivation is.
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A A Milne for a right smart Alec.I bet your mate would have punched him in his honey stained mouth. .
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Supporting a football IS a cult. Completely and utterly tribal. Very basic. It is not a political system or even a society.
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teeeeeaaaammmmmmm
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That banner is like bringing the mistress over to celebrate your son’s birthday while the wife and all her relatives are there. There’s just some things you do not do. Unfurling a banner that pisses on the manager, especially at an away game, is bound to get you slapped about by other supporters. If you go to a match, you’re supportingt. If you don’t want to support, then don’t go.
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That banner reminds me of the Westboro Baptist Church protesting at funerals. If you don’t know who they are, google them.
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Yeh, G69! and look at the banner, its like they are speaking for all Arsenal supporters. It should say, “our little idiotic group would like to thank you… “.
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Apologies that my first post on this excellent life-affirming site is so long. But the news that Mike Dean is in charge of tomorrow’s game has sent me scurrying to my statistical tables. To make it marginally more bearable, I’ll post in four episodes.
“There are lies, damned lies and statistics.” No-one seems certain who said this first. Some claim it was Mark Twain: others Benjamin Disraeli. Probably it was neither.
It was most likely said by somebody who had just seen some numbers which didn’t suit his prejudices. So it probably came from a football supporter. Not, of course, an Arsenal supporter. (It pre-dates the club, anyway.) And it’s true – there are lies, damned lies and statistics, but they are three entirely different things. They only become confused when statistics are abused to produce lies (and perhaps even damned lies).
And for anyone who believes you can prove anything with statistics, it’s hard to know how you could be more wrong. You can’t actually prove anything with statistics alone. What you can do is ask in a systematic way “Is there anything fishy about this – is there anything that we ought to investigate?” In particular, you can ask “how unlikely is this to have happened by a pure fluke?” The general rule of thumb is that if it’s more than 95% unlikely, it’s worth looking further.
Which brings me to Mr Dean. How does his record in Arsenal matches stand up to statistical testing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (to be continued)
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Zim: “Poor Wellbeck. SAF called him “unplayable”. Yikes. Was he? Really? Or did he have a good game? I guess it’s bit of gamesmanship at Ronaldo.”
No, Zim, he’s taking the piss out of Mourinho. I think Mourinho said something which hinted at Wellbeck and Jones being shit. Jones I totally agree is crap, but Wellbeck is a good player.
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@ LD
They do have the right within the law of this country and the rules at the ground, but that doesn’t mean they should do it. If they just wanted to express their opinion they could write to the club, call the Fans’ Forum, speak up at the AGM. They are doing more than that – they are making a statement by having a banner at the game where TV cameras will be on it. Their intention is to undermine the manager at the game, otherwise why have the banner there? It’s a bit like that official who made a point of saying to City players that they should thank their fans who had paid £62 to attend the Emirates – totally disingenuous of some to claim that he was just expressing his opinion. Banners like that should not be displayed in the stadium – support the team on the matchday and leave your egos at the turnstiles, I say.
By the way, my post at 2:58pm was a response to you, I forgot to say that!
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He needs to keep the cannon off that banner, Paul. The cannon is the symbol which represents all of Goonerdom and he certainly doesn’t speak for all of us. The “In Arsene We Trust” banner doesn’t appropriate the cannon or the Arsena badge, so any comparisons to it are wrong.
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Phil Jones would not look out of place in the queue in a rummage sale. I don’t know whether Welbeck is any good or not. I can’t see past the club he plays for.
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Well done, merlot…..which reminds me.
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My step son assures me that Phil Jones is a great player.He also assures me that Cesc Fabregas was shit.and fat people are stronger than fit people.
Thank fuck he is no blood line of mine.
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As it was Pancake Day this week did you know that in the Middle Ages football was known as ‘Shrovetide’ football, or ‘mob’ football. Games would usually be played between neighbouring towns and villages, involving an unlimited number of players on opposing teams, who would fight and struggle to move an inflated pig’s bladder by any means possible to markers at each end of a town. The closest approximation to it today is Stoke City.
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…and that is what it would have been in England to this day if it had not been for Arsene Wenger.
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We all seem to believe that Arsenal’s record in matches refereed by Mr Dean is surprisingly poor. But is it poor enough to cause concern to a neutral? Only statistics can tell us. Not to prove anything – but to check whether our hunch about this is borne out by the numbers.
I only have records dating from 2005 when we moved to the Emirates, and in those eight seasons we have won 246 out of 443 competitive matches – well over a half. Mike Dean has refereed 31 of those. (I know – it feels like more.) Of those 31 we have won 8 – just over a quarter. A simple test shows that this is very unlikely indeed to have happened by pure chance. Certainly more than the crucial 95% unlikely. In fact, more than 99% unlikely.
So, we can say with certainty that there is a very significant bias in the results of Arsenal matches which Mr Dean has refereed since the start of the 2005-6 season. I don’t think the particular period of time chosen overstates this. The bias is even stronger if we restrict the period to the last four or five years.
But let’s not move from statistics to lies. This does not prove that Mr Dean himself is biased. It is true that a referee can crucially influence the outcome of a match – as we saw when Mr Dean sidled shyly into the limelight in the ManC game. But there are many other factors. It’s quite possible that those 31 matches might have had something else in common besides having the same referee.
So is there any other reason why these results might be biased? . . . . . . . . . . (to be continued)
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Paul N. if you love people defending their corner, you’re saying you agree with the banner. Cos that’s what they’re doing.
I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t understand what’s strong minded or strong hearted about creating a gated off community where you say, “People that don’t agree with me aren’t welcome here.”
I suppose the sad thing is that some of you (not all of you, I’ve read most of what’s been put on here over the last week and think a lot of good points have been made very well by the way) have become so determined to set yourself up in a camp that you can’t see that you’ve become everything you criticise.
Le Grove gets a fair amount of flack from people for not allowing opinions that differ from the author and for being relentlessly negative. Well what I’m getting from the comments section is that this is basically the same deal. That’s what happens when you set yourself up as an extremist faction and refuse to be flexible in your thinking. It’s not a cult, it’s a football team. That’s what’s so wonderful about it, it’s not religion or party politics or any of that stuff that seeks to divide the world.,
I get that many here get pissed off at fans for being relentlessly negative about the club cos I do too. I think it’s all about being objective and critical. The club will make mistakes, but it’s always just as well to try and see the thinking behind the decisions that are made at the time they’re made without 20-20 hindsight. But similarly it seems there’s an identifiable theme amongst many to do the same to the fans. Relentlessly criticising the fans, attacking them constantly, holding them responsible for all that’s wrong. After every defeat, attack the fans, call them morons, celebrate violence against them.
I guess I don’t really understand how that creates and fosters a positive atmosphere either. It just encourages more division, more anger and, perhaps unwittingly, provokes even more extreme reactions from “the opposition” and the whole thing is a vicious circle. I know the guys with the banner and I don’t like it one bit, but they’re not saying it represents me. I completely disagree with almost all of their opinions about Arsenal, but we talk about it civilly. I see them on the train on the way to away games (as I did en route to Sunderland) and I chat with them, have a beer with them in the pub, sing songs together. When you stop seeing them as the boogiemen, you realise that they’re civil guys that you can just debate it with. That’s a much better way to go than gating yourself off, setting yourself up as a rival ‘firm’ and exacerbating the divisions further.
Nietzsche said it best, “When you fight monsters, beware. For when you look into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.”
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So anyway, how you doing FunGunner and what you been up to?
Gains, yes I suppose Wellbeck is a good player. They do have a couple I’m told. I don’t get to see them much these days.
That was pretty good Frank.
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I do like AA Milne, I read all my kids Winnie the Pooh mainly to laugh at the humour myself.
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The intellectual justification for waving your banner;
It’s democratic – whatever that means – I never voted for anything at AFC – manager, team selection, ticket prices etc have you ?
We should celebrate the right of our fellow supporters to tell the manager to fuck off in a stadium where Arsenal are playing – it shows we are mature – just seems self indulgent attention seeking to me – suit yourself
It’s good to be scrutinized – so waving that banners represents some form of creative scrutiny ? Ok ok ok
I’ve heard enough
I’ll get to work on the banner
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