Yesterday I tweeted this:
“Same philosophy, same tactics, same vision, but increased spending power. So, NO, ARSENE HASN’T CHANGED, his credit limit has.”
A few days ago I had this to say:
“Wenger isn’t back, because he’s never been away. He hasn’t changed and he certainly hasn’t listened to fans, or the media.”
It doesn’t take a lot to irk me [No shit – Ed] but the insistence from certain sections of the fan base and the media that Arsène has changed infuriates me to the point where I could punch a puppy.
They are adamant that Arsène has changed. Well, he has. He is older and wiser.
He has not, however, changed in the way they are insinuating.
These idiot halfwits (trust me that is the nicest description I could muster) want us to believe that they were right. He had “lost it”. He did want to feed his enormous ego by trying to win with a bunch of kids and cut price players. He was choosing not to spend the money that was available. He was happy with 4th and a last 16 place in Europe.
They have to think these things otherwise they would have to accept that they have been wrong.
Very wrong.
Completely wrong – and they won’t do that!
They have been wrong about Arsène.
They have been wrong about Ivan being incompetent.
They have been wrong about Stan being an asset stripper.
In short, they were wrong about everything.
However, having spent years talking absolute bollocks, they have to find some way of justifying their stupidity.
They want us to believe that they were right. Their lack of support for the great man – our greatest ever manager – is to be excused because “Arsène has changed“.
You hear things like, “we wanted him to buy world class players and now he is“. Completely ignoring what has been clear to anyone with even half a brain for 10 years.
He didn’t have the money to spend!
Or this little gem “We wanted to win trophies and now he has!” Again ignoring that he didn’t have the players to do it given that there were three clubs spending north of a billion pounds to buy up the said trophies.
I repeatedly hear “mistakes were made” and yet the vast majority of these perceived mistakes can be put down to the simple lack of funds.
They will do anything, and say anything, rather than admit they were the ones that were making mistakes.
Arsène is the same as he was last year, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, and 18 years ago when he first tipped up.
These people were unable to understand the simple economic realities that hamstrung the club. They spent years writing blogs, doing podcasts and tweeting about how they could do a better job than Arsène and the board. Make no mistake, if you are telling someone how to do their job, it’s because you think you know better.
Well they didn’t, not a single one of them.
The divide in the fan base was caused by them. It was not caused by those people who held their position of simply supporting the club. Both sides of the divide were not to blame. It was the uninformed pea-brains that thought they had the answers. Not those who just wanted to support the club.
It’s alright to be wrong. We are all wrong from time to time. But it’s not alright not toaccept being wrong, look for an excuse for your wrongness and hide behind it.
The most popular excuse seem to be Arsène has changed.
Well he hasn’t, so admit that and stop digging.
By pedantic george @Blackburngeorge
Positively Arsenal 
Who? Oh you mean arseblog again, yeah I do wish he’d eff orff already….
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Few look cuter in a loincloth
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That’s George the Pedantic I remember.. short and to the point
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ani; I have my own range now… Ghandi is gutted…. Really missed a trick there…
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Yesterdays war was won, gentle people. Wenger, Gazidis, the Board and the Owner were on the ropes but slowly but surely they turned the tide and firmly have the upper hand. Everybody has to come to terms with that reality; pro-Weger, anti-Wenger and those in-betweeners. George’s challenge is to turn that victory into stronger support for the club. As FH says we have a coven of biased referees led by the repellant Mike Riley waiting to fuck us up. Who is willing to demand referee accountability especially the right of managers to challenge certain decisions by referees. What about miking up referees, as in rugby, and require they must explain their decisions to the sidelines. I don’t have time to score points with those who once posted at that other blog so longst as they come to PA and honestly give the manager the support needed to next win the league title.
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All getting a little argumentative.
I really like this site and that its a place for people to revel in the fact that we are all proud supporters of Arsenal and they way that the club and manager conduct themselves. If you are here in a place that is so unequivocally about that then it should be enough. It seems northbank was having a bad day / days. You did challenge apropos to find dirt on you, so when he does find certain posts you can’t really accuse him of being sad mate. That said nothing that he dug up was particularly damning, other than a feint touch of klopp flirting, so why not try and get along.
Tell you what though that last post was a flowery fucker wasn’t it. Hats off for that alone.
“So during the period of modernism the term ‘classicism’ can undergo several simultanious metamorphoses to evoke an historical style (generally considered totalitarian) to enable a psychological disposition and to echo a transcendent truth which denotes an historical style and a failure of nerve.”
Boom! I had half a bar on when I read that and I didn’t understand any of it.
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Pretentious shit I would have called it in my fighting days.
But now I see it as beautiful prose (banned smiley face)
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gunner-getcha
See, you can see from that I was totally legless and talking out of my arse…. what the fuck does it mean. I wrote it and I have no fucking idea.
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Gunner_Getcha @ 10:22pm:I was just as lost in Northbank’s prose but too afraid to admit. Thanks for helping out a friend (Banned smiley -face and all).
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Well anyway, despite all the above, the good news is that Wenga HAS in fact changed.
Dex called it right – his coat!
Which has been especially lengthened by Puma but, sadly, had the treacherous Velcro lining removed so it can no longer jam the longest zip in commercial coat manufacturing history.
Risky business, posting whilst under the influence fellas …
Agree with Shotta – one of the best things about 2014-15 will be the continued marginalisation of the haters and armchair critics (or ‘idiots’, as PG has assessed) and turn our attention to shining a light on Riley’s mob and their despicably northern biased ways. And THAT is a fight that may only ultimately be won by the creeping introduction of technology …
And what do you know? Why, even Usmanov has conceded that Arsenal’s time has come.
Battles and wars, battles and wars.
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It’s fine, let’s move on. The insanity plea has been accepted. It wasn’t nb, it never is. It was the Dutch boy.
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@foreverheady
August 4, 2014 at 6:58 am
The die has indeed been cast. Long ago.
Indeed, one idea was to stop the early season rampages produced by Arsenal. You know, when season after season, the youngsters would come out and overrun the opposition.
We’re not having that! We’ll put a stop to that. We’ll talk them down. We’ll card them. We’ll **** them up.
It just makes Arsenal’s achievements all the more magnificent!
V good post, PG.
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Talking about technology: Last nite’s match between Pool and United had an interesting moment when the referee awarded a goal after a ball hit the frame on the outside and rebounded onto the field and Rooney scored. Clearly outside to the tv viewer with low definition service. The commentator panics; clearly the ref, is not going to cock this up. Within seconds the 4th official calls the ref over to show the replays on tv showing the ball has gone outside. The ref swiftly over-rules himself. The whole thing was done before the usual post-goal celebrations with Rooney winking to his pals how he had conned the ref. The Americans were all blase about the whole thing given they have replay in their biggest and most lucrative sport American football. Simples. No drama.
Postscript: After the drama and the goalkick is about to be taken, the commentator then notes that the linesman had already blown that the ball had gone outside. And FIFA is satisfied. In a flash technology and replays were suddenly erased from the narrative. These guys are geniuses. Tells you how hard it will be to get a minimum of transparency in refereeing as we go forward.
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Lucky he did not have a Japanese 4th official Shotts
American football uses replay technology, cricket, both codes of rugby etc. While one are absolutely foolproof the application and use of replays will produce the correct, result and with very little fuss.
I really do not understand why football referees do not say F*** it
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New post is up
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“Arsène has changed” is the new “Arsène listened to the fans”, and just as comically flimsy a way to save face. What an incredible coincidence that Arsène ‘changes’ into some ambitious, cash-splashing winner right around the time large sponsorship deals allow for sustainable spending. It must follow that he also ‘changed’ into the stubborn, egotistical miser he was portrayed as around the same time as the club’s resources were greatly reduced by a £400m stadium. I’m sure that’s just another coincidence.
It’s also a farcical leap to surmise that increased spending is strong evidence of some deep, personal change within the manager when his footballing ideals remain the same. Even this summer’s recruits – another English teenager from Southampton, another French defender, one more diminutive attacking player – are classic Arsène, and serve to enhance his long standing philosophy of technical football and promoting youth.
There’s another fatal flaw in using ‘Change’ as a way to maintain one was still right about Arsène being tight and lacking ambition – if you accused him of being incapable of changing his ways, you’ve only compounded your mistake.
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