Belief.
We live in a world where every aspect of our lives is controlled by belief.
This most intriguing of psychological states is perhaps responsible for the shaping of our world more than anything else. The romantics may argue love and the cynics may argue greed is equally responsible, yet nothing is more dangerous than a man with either a lack of or an abundance of faith. From the dawn of civilisation, belief has elevated men to the heavens and dragged them to the depths of hell. Alexander The Great conquered the known world not because of his troops or unprecedented strategic mind but because he believed he could. Yet the excessive nature of his beliefs led to his downfall as his men mutinied against an invasion of India after years at war. Gaius Juluis Caesar’s belief in his abilities led him to conquer France with his faith in his political nous helped him dispatch his rivals in Rome. Yet his convictions that he should introduce reform and that he should be held accountable to no man lead to his rather bloody end.
While remarkable individuals such as these exuded faith in themselves others have displayed trust in existential beliefs. In 1095 Pope Urban II decreed that the Holy Land should be liberated from those of other religious faiths that held it due to his beliefs. Thus began almost 200 years of unabridged violence and hatred in the Middle East, the aftermath of which can still be felt today. Countless wars have been fought due to beliefs about war, land, rights and the belief in the sanctity of freedom. It has enabled our species to take to the skies, touch the highest peak on our world and even walk on the moon. It has also caused the extermination of 6 million Jews, ingrained prejudice and terrorist attacks. A sombre and most probably inappropriate time for me to finally start talking about Arsenal then you may think.
The Gunners are at yet another pivotal moment in our season and it’s safe to say that the fans have gone well and truly mental this season. I would suggest that the increased expectation this season due to our first truly world class signing in years has altered the chemical balance of several Gooner’s brains. It’s certainly more polite than hypothesising that they may in fact, just be idiots. This article is being penned on the night of our victory over Liverpool and the idea of a blog on belief occurred to me during the build-up to the game. Various degrees of belief were on show, from the belief that “Arsene has went mental” spiel from renowned doom-monger LeGrove to the belief that “We should support the team” from neutrals to the belief that” Everything will be absolutely fantastic” from the almost nauseatingly optimistic Blackburn George. I of course retained my belief that James ‘Raul’ Stokes is a filthy harlot with such perverted desires even Giroud’s mistress couldn’t fulfil them. While observers of the Arsenal online community will no doubt find that these individuals expressing said opinions hardly ground-breaking, it did intrigue me.
We are all perfectly aware that LeGrove and his cluster of likeminded individuals will spew forth negativity and general discontent until the club succumbs to their poisonous bile and eventually relents, allowing them places as Manager, Fitness Coach and CEO of our beloved club. Equally certain is that Blackburn George shall beam forth positivity, mowing down those that dare question the will of his God on his motorcycle of delusion. If one said the sky was blue the other would say green. We know they will never convince each other that their beliefs are correct.
Yet the notion that our chances should be dismissed so readily before the game is even played is incomprehensible and it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how football is actually played. Using such warped logic surely Fulham fans shouldn’t bother existing as on paper, they are the worst team in the league and must therefore be destined to lose every game? Such fervent belief that our team do not have the capability to win is laughable, never mind that they may not even be able to compete. As a side note, what alarms me more than that belief though, is the outpouring of bile that seems to accompany it. If an opinion is posted it will typically be followed with several people posting insults to Wenger, the players, the board or anyone that crosses their path. It is shameful to see and lets all our fanbase down.
It seems strange to me that even during the good times, when we have beat Liverpool twice, Spurs twice, topped the league and progressed from the Champions League Group of Death that certain individuals have displayed a complete lack of faith in our team. To examine our players, the conviction and abilities they possess and yet still determine that they are unable to compete shows, for me, someone who struggles to comprehend that we have progressed from the team of pretty passers to a team worthy of the club. A desire to see Arsenal fail so that changes are implemented is equally as disgusting.
Our manager and players have spoken several times of their trust in each other and belief that they can end our wait for a trophy. I retain the belief that Arsenal can win the league this year. More than that, I have faith that we can win the double of the League and FA cup. Whilst others will disagree, as is their right, I shall remain convinced of our team’s qualities, although perhaps not to the radical degree of Blackburn George and his ilk.
Since I have harped on about belief so much I thought I’d leave you with a 2500 year old quote that remains relevant that we can all appreciate:
“Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.”
Thanks for reading and to George for hosting this on his wonderful site. I’ve been Dyllan Munro and feel free to drop a comment and let me know what you think of the article. You can also reach me on twitter @goonerdyllan. Thanks everyone.
Positively Arsenal 
What a message to the world!!
Hw I wish people will read, understand and make use of the lessons there in.
A very well written article dyllan.
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I can only agree with ‘lankylord’s’ comment. Well set up article culminating in a top class finishing. How much I wish those “Wengerbashers” and “9yearsnotrophycrybabies” would understand, that after a lost game you don’t need to replace a manager and declaring half the team as dead wood. Until today most fans (plastic fans mainly though) have not enough brains to realise the tremendous progress we have made since last season, yet they complain. Next game we win, they are on the “must win all trophies now” road track. Hot, cold, hot, cold … the Chinese call this çhickenshit’.
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Well, dash my buttons. Does Le Grove really still exist?
Rather odd to be citing George as comparable at the other end of the spectrum (or have I missed some convoluted irony?). It would have been interesting to have tested the theory by offering this piece to Le Grove to publish.
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Belief requires strength of character and knowing what you want or knowing what you support and why. Most of these cunts who get online to critisise are spineless weak bastards who havent got the guts to believe in what Arsenal is doing. Maybe thats because their weak character has been manipulated by media and trolls pulling their legs on trophyless years. A clever man/woman can see that arsenal clearly sacrificed titles in order to repay its stadium and stand on its own two feet. A clever fan does not compare arsenal with clubs who spent 200-300 million on players every 2-3 years for ready players to go win titles. Either arsenal fans are stupid or they are just weak cause they were never big as a club to know HOW TO SUPPORT. but thats why i came back here. to put things straight. like mathieu. go spartacus!
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The thing is our fans are no different to any other club, not really, not in character. The sole difference is a now 6-7 year effort by much mainstream media to have the label failure pinned upon Monsieur Wenger, using any and all obfuscation, distortion, lies by omission and lies of deceit. Man, it’s a grand old journalistic tradition; accentuate the negatives and keep turning that screw to up-end one story on its head and create an illusion. I don’t know why they have done so exactly. Usually in such cases two things are at stake: money and/or national pride/identity, or more a confluence of the two. I can only imagine it is not in everyone’s interest amongst the establishment that a French intellectual is credited with changing the game of football in England.
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I can only imagine it is not in everyone’s interest amongst the establishment that a French intellectual is credited with changing the game of football in England.
you are too kind 🙂
the cheats of 66 with their neanderthal hoofball and kick and rush are getting owned inside their country in the game they discovered (but dont know how to play it) and the pill is very bitter to swallow….
it takes a really thick and stupid mentality to associate a sport with national identity and to feel threatened that their ways of lie and culture are changing just cause a frenchman is teaching them how its done in football ffs. wenger does not represent the french school of football. wenger represents a universal/international approach. no boundaries.
perhaps the english lack the open-mindness or dignity to admit they are shit at football and can only be relevant in the sport by inviting tycoons to invest in their clubs and then bask about epl success and moan about forgeners ruining their game at the same time…haha
the ideals of the english game as barkley said …….LOL …….
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Dyllan is obviously using George as a metaphor for the opposite end of the spectrum; negative vs positive. Nothing wrong with that concept, in fact in nature, as in football, opposites exist and are fundamental to creation and re-generation. The tricky part is to not see our division into positive and negatives as something fixed and permanent. The interaction of positive and negative causes change. New realities are created and in turn generate new contradictions. Identifying and adapting to these changes and contradictions fundamental to our survival as human beings. To not do that is an idiot. This is where I put Peter at Le Grove and his acolytes. He obviously is not the only one.
Football has changed. Arsenal has changed. In my opinion, in Arsene Wenger we have someone who has shown leadership in identifying and adapting to these changes. There are scores of examples I could point to but time does not allow. That is where I fundamentally disagreed with the “End-of-an-Eraists.” But at least they are not idiots. Pedro and his ilk are are like flat-earthers who are in denial that we are in the 21st century. It is not positive vs negative. It is having to live with stupidity day-in and day out. No wonder they can’t enjoy the football.
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Come on Arsene !!!!!!! Show them who is BOSS in this country! he he he ….with their fucking ferguson and mourinho love-in.. cunts…
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I think it’s more obvious then that. For a long long time the club have been telling a certain genus of “agent” to, and I quote, to “Fark orf”. The record is there for all to see.
And as more and more pure and unrefined Wonga flooded into the game over the last 15 years, this dance has continued. And it is strange to me that the Groaners and experts on their Arsenals ignore that there is past form in this area from both the club and the gaffer, from before their marriage. They share the same values. It’s not exactly a secret what they are, and it makes the avoidance of this topic by all these Arsenal Experts slightly odd. Especially the Experts who will not or cannot deny that they represent certain financial interests that would like to have the keys in the club treasury, more importantly to the land the club owns (see West Ham Utd, Roman’s thwarted schemes for the Ken Bates mausoleum/retail complex…etc!) and the rest.
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Just what is it that we want to do?
We wanna be free to go to the footy without the need to take out a mortgage?
We wanna be free to do what we wanna do
And we wanna get loaded (on the footy!)
And we wanna have a good time
That’s what we’re gonna do
We’re gonna have a good time
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Great bit of writing Dyllan – enjoyed that.
I cant help thinking that the concept of faith as a necessary foundation of belief may be one to explore further.
We have those fans of our football club, and by no means only our club, whose belief requires their faith to be fed, encouraged and reinforced only be clear empirical evidence. They can only believe if there is evidence in the form of trophies and of relentless success on the pitch in the form of three points week in and week out. Any deviation from that model indicates that their belief is flawed. They insist they have been deliberately misled, they have ‘paid my money’ and they want their Arsenal ‘back’.
They lack faith – that faith being the confident belief in the club, and all its works, with no necessity to rely on external measures of success or failure or the need to have their wavering sense of personal investment reinforced week after week.
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Continuation of my rant (sorry)
For example – Why are financial experts who are fans of Arsenal football club surprised or disappointed when the club uses a barge pole to steer clear of players with third party ownership, for as long a they can? Do they not agree with the values, the beliefs of the club? I guess not. As the Arsenal get ready for a game against the Adidas team tomorrow, some may say that they believe that there is no difference between the Munchen model and how Porto have been doing business. However there is plenty of evidence that indicates that AFC believe that there is a difference.
I am not a financial expert. I am not a football expert. But I could have told you that the Bernard stories were best avoided last summer. It’s very unlikely AFC will sign such a player from Porto or a club following a similar model. That is the true speciality of the Portugeezer. He is a specialist in signing players with third party ownership. That is why he signs so many of them! Simples.
–
Having written the above, look out for Arsenal signing Jackson Martinez in Summer. ; )
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Its also sheer stupidity. It is the OWNERS of the club who decided to sacrifice trophies to repay their stadium yet wenger gets thrashed for failure to win titles as if he is given 100m per summer to go win the title.
If arsenal really wanted to compete and win titles, the owners would advise their manager of their desires and give him appropriate budget. ” Here Arsene, here is 150 million, we want the title for our fans” . Did that ever happen? No. So why blame the manager/employee whjo is simply following Club policy?
Do the fans not like the policy ? Well tough luck. It has to be done. Here is where the fan grows a spine and supports. If they want a different policy the can ask Stan for a selling price.
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But you cant exactly come out and say ” listen beloved fans, forget ttiles for at least another decade, we are building” – when you want to fill up a brand new 60k stadium now can you? Shooting yourself on the foot? Not clever.
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Yes Hunter.
But we are talking about Experts here. Experts who have forensically examined all aspects of the club. For years. The accounts, Doris’ dress code, the consistency and slip resistance of the tarmac on the podium that surrounds the stadium. Everything.
How could they miss an observation that most others’ have made? That it was about three or four years after moving into their new home that the Arsenal could afford to paint the walls and put up some paintings and drapes to add bit of colour to proceedings. No one can deny that such things as a bit of bling are important in the soulless world of corporate hospitality: is our very own Expert PR Guru unaware of the importance of ‘branding’*? It would appear so! Oops. Either that or…
*please refer to your favourite Bill Hicks quote
Some people have said to me that I have a good eye for such things, but let’s be fair, it’s not hard to spot thousands and thousands of square meters of unfinished concrete that had been left in that condition because there was no more money left in the budget at that time. Just in case there is still any doubt, even a little, on how tight things were at handover and the period after the choice of that tarmac that we all walk upon for the stadium podium over cheap as chips concrete paving stones (we use them on all our pavements, they are not relatively expensive) is the clincher. Very. Little. Money.
When our friend Not Over The Hill tells us that the much quoted Swiss Ramble miscalculated £30M (peanuts!) from the construction budget (from the housing not the stadium) I think it is fair to say that he knows what he is talking about.
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Terrific article Dyllan, real food for thought. And VERY relevant; the sheer uplifting joy of being in the stadium on Sunday was to witness how the fans’ faith – as evidenced by the extraordinary cacophony we generated – transmitted itself to the players. That they reacted to this mass show of faith was demonstrated both by their resilience in the closing stages of the game in particular, and their encouragement of the fans to continue with the level of support being provided.
This was exactly what the applause of the players was all about in the immediate aftermath of the game.
***
Hunter (1.21 pm) – I think therein lies part of the problem; the AFC Board repeatedly stating as fact that funds were available for transfer activity from Day 1 of the move.
They HAD to maintain the illusion of business as usual and even the best and worst of us were confused by that stance for a while. In the meantime we declined to replace Henry, Viera, Pires etc whilst maintaining the money was there to do so if Arsene wished. In this, the club was between a rock and a hard place.
But it would be disengenuous to suggest there is no basis to any of the criticisms of the club; I’m pretty sure the likes of Ivan et al would agree with this – but point to the necessity of the situation.
Tricky business, reinventing a football club …
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“They HAD to maintain the illusion of business as usual and even the best and worst of us were confused by that stance for a while”
Only the idiots were confused …i dont accept that as an excuse ..they could all see a team full of “teenagers” assembled on peanuts going against clubs that would spend on ready players to go for titles.
At best i would accept that as an excuse from twenty yearolds , not from fans who want to run blogs and are of an age who should read between the lines.
Hillwood says it in agm meeting in 2010…we have to create surpluss of 25 millionper year through player sales. And if you check the budgets and what we sold at what we spent at the time it tallies.
And there are no illusions in this business things are simply…arsenal = pisspoor and a 450 million investment over their heads….what titles? only a fool would expect titles in thisperiod.
That wenger maintanined faith and aimed high and constantly encouraged his players and teams was off course to keep the standards at a world class level and to treat champions league qualification as the minimum. Something he achieved every single year and not liek some other giant clubs who change managers and become unrecognisable……
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And if the club needs to come and spell out the obvious then im sorry but the fans are even dumber than i thought and not that loyal or have that much love for their club.
Tell you what…say i accept for a minute that its all because of the “evil dictator” …….do the owners know any other way of how to place Arsenal in the world elite of football companies/clubs? Why dont they do it then ? Are they stupid to pay Wenger 6-7m a year just to fail them?
Is that what fans and media think?
If the people who own Arsenal wanted to dominate over chelsea united etc they would ACT and SPEND accordingly. During their transition, they couldnt. From now onwards they might be able to compete on a more equal basis than before.
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To do that …someone had to bust his arse day and night and stick to a financial policy with strict discipline and chase ferraris on a bicycle.
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No, not just “idiots” were confused – people accustomed to taking the pronouncements of the Board’s Directors at face value were also caught out. They had always maintained during the stadium build that the move would have zero impact on our transfer budgets. This particular narrative had certainly been corrected by 2010 as you rightly point out, but by then the seeds of mistrust for some followers had been sewn.
For this idiot, the club’s success in riding out the global financial crisis from 2007-08 without collapse is the bigger story and our corporate resilience during this period was truly remarkable. And as Fins points out, the gradual “Arsenalisation” of the concrete monolith was further evidence of the club’s gradual return to fiscal good health.
That it has taken until 2014 for the club to generate a war chest in excess of £100 M tells its own story about the nature of the road we were once on. But none of this has happened overnight; that it has happened at all may one day be revealed to be little less than a footballing miracle.
Fortunately, some of us never lost the faith that it would all come good in the end. That some were confused by the complexity of events and the twists and turns we all lived through should hardly come as a surprise, in my opinion.
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They had always maintained during the stadium build that the move would have zero impact on our transfer budgets.
i understand what you mean but … what else were they gonna say ? Be honest? Ha ! Who is honest in this business? Or any business for that matter? Who comes out telling the truth about internal private company finance matters ? None ive heard off….
If i can seperate the two and read between the lines and judge from the actions of the club surely others can do it too. Then again the marriage of financial structures and football clubs is an area most fans dont give a shit about expecting someone else to keep paying for it…………
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We never lost faith. Not even during our darkest hour. We supported.
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damn right gains…when you know and can explain what is going on in fornt of you, you support unconditionally
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even almunia ! 🙂
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Oh and the irony …….. if this all because @they lied to us@ then i only have the following to say :
alistair cambell and the english government LIED about iraq’s weapons of massive destruction and english people have died in afganistan and iraq for the sake of “democracy” with the bush family and cheeney laughing their fucking arses off.
the reaction to english people getting killed so that the usa get their hands on oil is not even at 1% to the reaction of the arsenal fans about trophies.
at least arsenal’s “lies” dont kill people and maybe fans should find other things to occupy themsleves if football doesnt entertain them anymore…..
the ideals barkely talked about surely……
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Sorry to change le subject chaps and chapettes but what do you make of the RvP rooners, sorry rumours? Do they have traction. One points out that le boss has met with les agents. I’m only drooling. Giroud, Sanogo, Campbell, RvP. Costa. Lukas. Theo. Gnabry. Draxler. Zelalem (early days I know). Mesut. Santi. Aaron. Ox. And if that is not droolable, I don’t know what is. Totally speculative. Oh, shit I’ve caught the disease. The bug. The epidemic. I’ve got transferitis. Quick. Panadol. No, whisky. OK, no make it a coffee and a fag then. Help!
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Thanks Dyllan.
Finsbury, I didnt know money was THAT tight. Tells you how vital champions league was.
Chasing Ferraris in Bicycles. I like that hunter. Maybe not that extreme though. Maybe it can be said that we drove a lesser car, almost technically perfectly to keep up with the Ferraris.
What could we do when we were short on cash? Take an extra 70 million pound loan and buy two super stars? How long would it have taken Chelsea to spend 100 million and gazump us? How could we go toe to toe when we were paying off the stadium?
One reason I can think of for the board using subterfuge is that, if we told the world we were broke, we couldnt have sold the players at the prices we sold them for. Our hand would have been severely weakened.
There is a picture on the internet made by an Arsenal fan that divides the Emirates stadium into sections and says, “adebayor paid for this section”, “nasri paid for this section”, “judas paid for this section”, etc. Makes you laugh.
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I can honestly say I never lost faith because I never had any. I don’t need faith to know what Arsenal has done, and in many ways even the “how”, the difference between vision, planning, building and sweaty palms, buckling at the knees, all graceless defeat to speculative capital. All I need is a few facts. The large figure financial facts are easily obtainable, some in your face, some on the field, from multiple sources, that concur in the main. It’s only the distortion of facts that requires hope, faith and charity.
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There is a picture on the internet made by an Arsenal fan that divides the Emirates stadium into sections and says, “adebayor paid for this section”, “nasri paid for this section”, “judas paid for this section”, etc. Makes you laugh.
its very true though
ok lets not say ferraris vs bicycle………. formula 1 vs skateboard i think is closer to what i wanted to say 🙂
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“One reason I can think of for the board using subterfuge is that, if we told the world we were broke, we couldnt have sold the players at the prices we sold them for. Our hand would have been severely weakened.”
It would have also hurt our chances of filling up the ground every match, weakened our position when negotiating sponsorship deals, made it more difficult to extend players’ contracts, etc. There’s probably more reasons why the club had to maintain an appearance of financial strength and competitiveness. It might not have been the honest thing but fans should recognise this was a necessary ‘deceit’, done in the best interests of the club.
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bravo leo , smart man.
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What a great piece by Dyllan! That is such an erudite article for someone so young.
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How could we go toe to toe when we were paying off the stadium?
but we did go toe to toe with all of them , just couldnt bring it home in the end which is logical considering the experience of the players. if we were not even getting close then yes fans would be entitled to worry….only once fabregas left did we experience ten points gaps from the top
here the opposite happened , instead of being congratulated for overachieveing they were trolled to death till breakpoint physical and mental and then choosing to laugh at wenger instead of making honest assessments.
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Sensational Arsenal
I have not seen the books! Like our frustrated friend Jabba and his paid up Trolls I do not sit on the Arsenal board and am therefore not allowed to look. But I can guess. I do know that CL qualification was vital for the long term plan. To avoid a Liverpool style setback.
From David Winner, the editor of Stillness & Speed the recent autobiography by DB10
http://www.arsenalfc.de/index.php?Itemid=64&task=view&option=com_content&id=562
“As I was doing the research for my book, I was talking to Ken Friar, who had been Arsenal‘s managing director for a long time, and I pointed out that it looks as if the club would possess a lot of money but does not want to spend it. He replied: “Well, we do not tell everything to everybody.“ In other words, Arsenal was nearly bankrupt. Tony Adams told me, that the club would have been in existential trouble if the team would have missed out on the Champions League for a couple of times. It seems almost incredible that Wenger achieved to keep the team on this level even though about 10 years ago he had to stop spending money on big renowned players.“
So, the editor of Denis Bergkamp’s book also quotes Ken Friar and Tony Adams. Significant figures.
Then there is the concurrance of the new sponsership deals and the new TV monies with the intention to try and buy over the last few windows. The ability to spend, spend, spend… Rumours are that AFC were gasumped(methane) on Cavani by PSG after Napoli rejected a £30M bid last January. They waited for the gas giant to come in at approximately double the price! Same thing happened with Mata, just wasn’t as obvious. Same thing didn’t happen with Ozil, yet our Expert critics believe that this transfer was a fluke and that the likes of PSG were not sniffing. Not only have we been told that PSG were after him, our esteemed Experts have, out of demented bitterness, chosen to deny themselves the pleasure of appreciating one of the funniest conclusions to a transfer window that will ever be seen. The humbling of Levy, the combination and outcome of that game with both mega-transfers (Bale!) will not be bettered by any club anytime soon.
Sado-masochistic tendencies?
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We almost won in 07/08. The good thing is that many Arsenal fans agree that the horrific Eduardo injury was the breaking point. Imagine if that young group of players had stuck together and matured. They would be winning titles for fun now. In hindsight, that squad missed players like Per and Arteta. However, this current squad is pretty incredible. We could write essays just about the Per-Kos centre back pairing. So i guess it is all for the best.
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We built a stadium right before an economic collapse and we survived the ordeal. That blows me f-in mind.
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Finsbury, those are significant quotes. Your points about the unfinished concrete and cheap stones is also significant. How come other supporters didnt see this and realise too?
My question now is, Why did Tony Adams give interviews that we had to spend when he knew for a fact that we were on a tightrope?
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One of the funniest most ironic things I’ve ever seen was the protest march finishing at the armoury turning and facing the new 60,000 stadium and singing where’s all the money gone. It was like the few thousand tonnes of concrete was invisible.
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Another thing is what if the players being sold, knew full well they were being sold to pay for the stadium, can we still hate them.
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I think the mistake the club made when trying to keep up appearances was to say “the money is there if the manager wants to spend it”. It shifted the onus away from them and onto Arsene; that our lack of spending was a choice, and that choice was made by the manager. It gave birth to the narrative of Arsene The Miser that still haunts him today, even after we’ve spent £42m on a player some simply refuse to believe that he wanted or sanctioned the deal, that Ozil was foisted upon him. That was a misstep by the board which, over time, invited unfair pressure and criticism onto Arsene.
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finsbury
February 18, 2014 at 4:52 pm
epic post
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Sensational Arsenal
February 18, 2014 at 4:59 pm
how dare you say that …and what are we ? are we idiots to invest 20 and 30 and 50m at times on any given player just so that wenger beats us all with cesc and gael and theo…fuck no…. get stuck in ..knock them of their stride..theyre only kids…
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“that our lack of spending was a choice,”
cosnidering the level of intelligence of the average arsenal fan, perhaps you are right
🙂
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LeoS (5.15 pm) – yes, that was precisely my point.
I have no doubt the club did what it had to do at the time but it effectively hung AW out to dry by repeating the mantra “the money is there” when it patently was not. So then, when we started falling short, sometimes coming very close to winning things, the frustration of some supporters – having been repeatedly told “the money is there” was palpable and hardly surprising. How often did we look a player or two short? A little bit of experience would have gone a long way with the kids. But we know now this might as well have been pie-in-the-sky.
It would not normally be necessary to read between the lines in order to support one’s chosen club but the fact is, in Arsenal’s case, for a few years, it actually was.
So it’s hardly surprising we now have a legacy issue which one hopes will fade with time and future success. But in the meantime we have to endure the club’s critics who are firmly enconcsed as far as the eye can see within the fanbase, the media, our opponents, etc, etc.
My point isn’t that AFC should have done things any differently – I’m sure they did what they had to do and with the very best of intentions.
But the fall-out is the legacy issue that the club and the likes of PA and other genuinely supporting ‘agents’ have to deal with today.
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SA
Minor correction or clarification to my own post. Unfinished concrete mean the structural concrete, no final layers of polish/paint etc. The project handover was almost what could be described as ‘shell & core’ condition: the bare minimum requirement, and it remained in that condition for a little while.
The ring of corporate suites on the middle tier that clubs like Barca are hoping to now copy (if they can afford it) were ready to go and then upgraded further earlier then the other areas, as expected, but it still took a little while to get them looking properly bling-tastic.
As for Tony Adams? Who knows. Bless ‘im.
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@ArsenalAndrew
I agreed with your point, sorry if I hadn’t made it clear. I was adding my own thoughts on it. And I also agree with this completely.
That many fans would have been confused and frustrated by the club saying one thing yet doing another is not surprising, and I have (or had) some sympathy for them. They were looking for answers; at this point the media could have been helpful to the club’s cause if they so wished – pointed out the difficulties of our situation and eased the minds of the fans. It’s not a question of ignorance when it comes to the media who have been full of praise for clubs like Dortmund, Everton, Southampton, and others, which develop youth, spend within their means and punch above their weight.
When it came to Arsenal a very different narrative was constructed to confirm and compound the misery of the fans, a shallow soap opera painting the likes of Wenger, Gazidis, Hill-Wood, Kroenke as gross caricatures – miserly, incompetent, out of touch, greedy. Malicious and illogical rumours were spread and repeated until they became public opinion, these public opinions repeated by the frustrated and gullible fans until they become an accepted fact. Social media has made it easy for the gutter press to find what fans are discussing, what kind of theories they’re coming up with, and then write stories which confirm their theories and fears. It became a vicious cycle of negativity that only trophies and/or massive signings, both unattainable for many years under the circumstances, could have broken.
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But then the signing of Ozil hasn’t broken the cycle for many, not at all. And I doubt a League Cup would have achieved much either. As you say it’s now very firmly ensconced with many that the club has made horrendous mistakes, that it has ‘failed’ the fans, that Arsene Wenger is stubborn, dictatorial and Project Youth obsessed, etc.
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Leo – the whole malevolence reserved for Arsenal by the media is a thing to behold, isn’t it?
journalism? Inept, ignorant or even corrupt writing – take your pick but they do seem to have taken their lead from the perceived mood of the fans.
Unpicking this particular vicious circle might take longer than one might reasonably expect.
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Looking forward to the Etihad – Citeh going a bit cautious but Messi is as near perfect as I have ever seen
If things go well against Bavaria Rovers one of these two we might well meet in the final
Enjoy
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seriously enjoyable article… well written… well commented too.
BELIEF is key to this end of the season… we can come out with the treble and i will not give up on any trophy regardless of the opposition till we are mathematically out of them
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