Football has always been about opinions.
In the olden days we would sit around in small groups and moan about certain players. We might also blame the manager for poor form. It was always thus.
Now though we have taken moaning to new levels. There are those who have taken to attacking everything at the club to professional levels.
There are those that write blogs, tweet and podcast that have large followings and they have become Uber-Fans.
Based on what?
You might well ask! Well in most cases it’s based on no more than their mistaken belief that they are experts on err, umm err… well, everything really.
If you listen to podcasts, follow twitter or read blogs, they’re full of annoyingly pretentious ill-informed pillocks seeking to impress the gullible and the equally ill-informed. They pontificate from a position of ignorance on all matters relating to the club.
So now instead of it just being a few of us moaning about what our eyes have seen, it’s thousands moaning about things they know bugger all about.
These Uber-Fans are like contestants on The X-Factor who are prepared to make absolute idiots of themselves simply to become a celebrity. They seem intent on showing how smart they are at the expense of the club.
The problem being – they are not that smart at all. They are just loud.
Of course, I don’t want to tar everyone with the same brush. There are those who know a lot and talk a lot of sense. Every week I look forward to reading The Tim Stillman (@LittleDutchVA) column on Arseblog. Tim offers ideas on tactics, players and the manager that I find both interesting and even educational. However, he does not preach or insist that his ideas and opinions are definitive. In short, he doesn’t profess to be a know-all. I might be wrong, but it looks to me that he also understands that he has a responsibility to be balanced. There are others, but they are thin on the ground.
The tone of many bloggers, tweeters and podcasters is provocative, snide and almost bitter. You might think winning the FA Cup, signing the likes of Sanchez and Ozil, or even the appointment of a new fitness supremo would have mellowed the tone of these uninformed experts, but no, none of it. Everything from tactics and formations to the timing of substitutions and how many sugars Doris is putting in the tea, is savaged and rubbished.
Here are some words from our own Arsenal Andrew:
“There is an irony not lost on many of us here in having a man with the brilliance of Wenger hounded by the likes of those for whom the lights may appear to be on, but who quite clearly, are no longer at home.
The genius of Wenger is conversely offset by the rank stupidity of a noisy band of barackers, modern-day hecklers who long ago forgot what it meant to support, who today visit upon the club as disconnected strangers sadly oblivious to the maxim of supporting through thick and thin.
Together this limp collection of disbelievers rally together with the single hollow bond of those claiming to love the club to the ends of the earth, but who in reality, as Bergkamp memorably observed, love merely the version with trophies.
They lightly skip, trip and stumble over what they would have us believe are the issues of the hour. Meanwhile the club grows and develops, moving purposefully and with grace, ever forward towards a goal and a destiny born of breathtaking ambition.
A destiny in which we, the fans, had just one job.
We just had the one job.”
I was hoping that the fight was over, that the clear and present improvement of the club would allow us to just get on with that one job.
Seems I hoped in vain.
By pedantic george aka @Blackburngeorge
Positively Arsenal 
Great post!
The highs and lows are part of supporting. We all want Arsenal to do well but football, like real life doesn’t always meet our hopes. Roll with it, stick together during the lows and enjoy the highs.
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Perfectly brilliant work. Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Thank you
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many arsenal blogs realized a long time ago that there are more hits to be gotten from being negative, and that it is far easier to get large amounts of followers support if you find fault in everything and everyone at Arsenal. Of course all dressed up in claims of doing it for the good of Arsenal, its never for personal glory or some sort of fame, its not like any of these bloggers ever get work in the media from their anti Arsenal rantings, yeah I know.
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Loved it George. We all know who the idiots are on twitter & the blogs that seem run by opposition fans. Best to ignore most as they are just self entitled fools.
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Absolutely superb post. Loved the Bergkamp quote – hadn’t seen that before.
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Well written George. I keep the moaners and groaners to a minimum. I can only take so much. I do enjoy they way you trouble them on Twitter. They can’t cope that’s for sure. Keep up the good work….
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Great rant George, hence why I am selective about where I spend my online Arsenal time. Giving a balanced opinion is one thing – we each see things slightly differently, which is fair enough. But I know exactly what you mean about the “I know better than the manager (despite no real life experience to call on) and if he doesn’t do what I think he is an idiot” brigade. They are deluded fools, but the oxygen of publicity is what sustains them. Andy Warhol was right about everyone having their 15 minutes of fame but sadly it has not been a positive development for humanity.
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Very well said! A blog worth bookmarking is a rarity.
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Best piece of writing I have seen in a long time!!
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I’ve given up the fight. I realise it just destroys the pleasure of watching football.
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I’ll do the fighting Stew, you do some writing? How about that for an idea?
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That would work George.
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Very well and succinctly put. Unfortunately it won’t stop the morons you refer to as they neither have the linguistic skills to understand well written correctly spelled prose or some of the above-four-letter words it contains. Furthermore they don’t have the attention span to read the entire piece as it’s more than 140 characters long.
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Fine piece George – I shall think carefully about a comment that your excellent commentary deserves overnight
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Nice tag-team post, George and Andrew.
Rather than band together – even if only in spirit – to support the club, many choose instead to try to make a name for themselves through their relentless criticism of the club. It is far easier to destroy than to create. The people who deserve our admiration are those who create something (like this site, for example) or who add to our collective knowledge or good humour. Life is too short to focus only on the negatives.
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Very well said and very timely. (I’m a fan of Tim Stillman’s blogs as well, btw.)
I also agree entirely with eduardo as to the reasons why most of the uberfans blog. Attention.
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Great post George with able assistance from AA correctly berating the AAA. Like you say there is alot of self Importance about mix that in with the interlopers from other clubs the genuinely frustrated and those who have been brought up thinking criticism is the way to follow a club and you have a stench of negativity which at times proves self fulfilling.
Sky and the PL have to share some of the blame for the way the football fan has stopped falling totally in love with their sides and in the end it may prove to be the death of the top teir of the english game
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Excellent article! Spot on.
Bitches with tablets.
These people write with hindsight and pretend to be itk when in reality they know jack.
Im sure most cant organise their mums basement let alone a multi million club with multi Billion opponent’s..
Well said.
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That is a good point Ian. Football depends on the fan turning up week in week out regardless of the result, but if the negativity is allowed to get too much of a hold there is the danger that the game will lose that. As important as the TV and online supporter base is, I do not think they can replace the in game supporter as part of the total package that makes the game so attractive and lucrative. There is a balance to be maintained and I think the current risk is that we are veering too far into the extreme negativity that is in danger of strangling the life out of the game we all love at the end of the day.
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Great post.
Great comments.
Great Boo’s up.
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“Great Boo’s up”
And Auntie has a turnip just like a thingy
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Great stuff George & Andrew,nice to see some new faces around the place as well,I am starting to get worried about Frank & Dexter again though..
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The number of clubs that appear half-consumed by self-criticism (ie fan negativity) is surely a cause for concern – Newcastle, Blackburn, Cardiff and Arsenal being possibly the most publicly recognised as having a fan ‘problem’. After all, eventually, if things really are as bad as a club’s micro-climate suggests it is, then eventually the numbers of fans turning up will drop off. A combination of failure both pitchside and on the terraces could prove particularly damaging, especially for a club with a history of success now labouring under the burden of residual expectation for the future.
I can’t have been the only one shocked by the sight of the empty stands at White Hart Lane for last night’s League Cup encounter with Forest? The vaccum of support in Middlesex contrasted most obviously with the previous night’s sell-out crowd at the Emirates. Avoiding too many of the obvious cheap shots, can we be certain that had Arsenal fallen out of the top four last May, lost the FA Cup/Charity Shield matches and subsequently imploded under the weight of negative fan reaction – that our own stadium on Tuesday night might not have been as empty as Tottenham’s was?
While we are winning, the effect of all those seeking to harm the club – including the worst of George’s Uber Fans – will be relatively limited. However, like a battery being slowly charged, or a hurricane-force storm gradually brewing, the potential devastation set to hit the club in the event of an ’empty’ season is not insignificant.
As one who believes in-stadium hostility is already a consideration for the club – see Wenger’s reluctance to play Ramsey two seasons back, and the suggestion some potential signings are deterred from joining us due to a certain fear-factor linked to our ‘supporters’ ability to turn on our best players at the drop of a hat or a misplaced pass (see Twitter, see Ozil etc) – then I am as committed as George and many others here on PA and beyond, to opposing the Uber Fans and holding their ill-thought through fabrications up to the light for all to see through.
As George says, there are some very fine exceptions to this in the world of blogging, commentators and beyond, but as a rule, the sources of the worst stench are rotton indeed.
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Frank, Decter and HUNTER?????
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Being relatively new to social media (last couple of years) I have been astonished by the negativity surrounding the club. Any excuse to criticise is taken: this morning it is a payment to the majority shareholder, yesterday a poorly rotated squad, the day before that negligent decision making in the window. What these examples have in common is that few of the people voicing their concerns have any idea about the truth or the circumstances that surround any of these issues. They jump to conclusions and then treat those conclusions as facts.
Meanwhile, I am left thanking my lucky stars that there are some sensible sites and decent tweeters, and hoping that soon we can get the discussion back to who should play up top, and whether Sanchez or Welbeck is the answer given Giroud’s unfortunate injury!
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Well said Tim and I hope you don’t mind if I expand upon your theme.
What used to be bizarre to my sight to the approach of the Uberbloggers and their flocks of credulous sheep was the incessantly changing targets of their dissatisfaction. As Tim has rightly said above yesterday it was Stan paying £3m out of funds of the club he owns, in relation to work he is entitled to for services rendered, into another business that he owns and which performed that service. The day before it is something else, the day before that some new perceived calamity that Arsene or the cub or some poor unfortunate player has maliciously heaped on the poor suffering fans, blah, blah, blah.
Gaze backwards a few months. The Uber bloggers whine was “Spend some farking money’ “Sign a farking forward” ” that Giroo is farking useless” “that Thomas Vermaelen is deadwood – get rid ” Their sheep baa’ed the message they had been fed loudly across the digital world, the phone in lines buzzed with self important discontents.
But we know the club gets on with its business buys and sells players. The strikers are bought, damn fine players. Do we hear any jot of pleasure or contentment from the Uber bloggers and the flock ? Not a bit of it. Now it has moved on to “Sign a farking central defensive beast” “Sign a farking defender’ “Why did you let Tommy V go for fark’s sake” etcetera etcetera etcetera.
I won’t bore you by taking you through fifty other examples of whining about commercial revenue streams, sponsorship, players signed, players not signed, deadwood kept, deadwood not kept, we have to win a trophy, oK we won a trophy but that don’t count. It is a constantly changing target of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Nothing Arsenal football club does is ever good enough, there is no joy or contentment in these people’s lives. They live to moan.
And then the mists cleared and I understood.
Now I suspect there are some Uberbloggers who are literally farmers of this discontent, and who understand that they can make a living by peddling material that attracts hits on their websites and £k’ching in their accounts. In a sense I admire them. They have identified a market and have devised, over time, a service product that satisfies and earns them a reward for work undertaken. They supply the sheep with a constantly changing themes of the wrong that Arsenal football club is doing to their fans, a daily diet of alleged crimes to top up their grievance levels. Peyton and Le Grove etc are service providers.
And the sheep themselves, this great baa’ing credulous mob prepared to turn on any player, any manager, any fellow fan who fails to join their abuse of the Club, who engage in strange clothing rituals of black scarves, like some form of jihadist sect! Who are they ?
Well I suspect a significant proportion of them are suffering from a mild form of a condition called “dysphoria”. That is a state of mind in which the individual is pathologically unable to enjoy or to even gain contentment with their circumstances in life, or in this case with the football cub they believe, and probably sincerely believe, they “support”. Those suffering dysphoria externalise the mixture of anxiety and depression they experience. No matter what changes in the external world however, how their personal circumstances might improve materially or emotionally, they will not be happy because that healthy psychological response is not open to them. Even if a long term demand is satisfied today, by tomorrow morning a whole new set of dissatisfactions will have been created, or as I explained above, been provided by the “service providers”.
So no George these people are not out to destroy Arsenal , the people are sick.
My apologies for going on so long and congratulations to any one who has made it to the end of the piece.
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I read 2 things on a “ambitious modern blog”
1) ISIS should attack Wenger for giving so much pain to fans
2) Fans should criticize and make a mockery of Wenger till the point he gets defalted and leaves the club
But George i think, twitter and blogs are a myopic view of Arsenal Fanbase-
1) I believe 80% of fans are like you and me, balanced. I read a survey where 80% people still wanted Wenger to continue as manager
2) Problem with internet is that everyone is equal, it is democracy utopia, anyone can question(read abuse) anyone, but you’ll notice on comment sections of these elite bloggers that there are the same 10-15 moaners going on and on about the same stuff again. You’ll hardly find anyone new there, i still believe majority is sane.
3) BUT negativity and provocativeness gets you attention, gets more people on the blog, being divisive is a better model to run a blog, we as humans seek novelty, reading something unpredictable and emotive fulfills our need to do that. It is a good business model. Honestly your blog is very sane and hence predictable and hence a little boring! You twitter feed on another hand is interesting.
4) To a judge a guy who is a true supporter of the club ask him about Diaby, if he says very talented, but bad luck and shame we missed his services assume that guy is sane. If on other hand someone say “wasted wages, crooked, joke, don’t give him a game , he doesn’t deserve it” you’ll know he has done his Moaning 101 pretty well.
5) I also wonder quite a lot – “Why are they doing it”? Probable answers.
a) It is a good personal strategy, if team wins you feel good, since you are a “supporter”, if team loses then bring on the “I told you so” and give yourself an ego kick.
b) If you toss a coin, you are right on an average 50% of time, this lucky prediction can cause you to overestimate your ability and quickly forget all your prediction failures. We all have coin toss wins sometimes to make us feel good. But wise realize what it is, a coin toss and not any sort of innate ability to predict future.
c) There is nothing to lose for moaners! Seriously without any sort of accountability what harm does criticizing does to them. None. I am a stock trader by profession, i hate when people have opinions but do not put anything on stake for those opinions. Would anyone bet in 1000 pounds that Brendan will outperform Wenger in next 5 years? I doubt.
d) May be most of them are high school kids without any real hobbies?
Looking forward to the spurs game!
One thing i noticed, in our previous league game all 3 goals had a “one-touch passing”- the Wenger ball. It has been absent since couple of years. I hope it is here to stay.
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What a gem of a post by anicoll5- “dysphoria”!
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Thank you Rajat I loved your writing – two minds two locations one time one football cub !
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*club
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Nice post George
The so called Ubers may want to destroy the Arsenal but they never will. The Arsenal goes on for ever. As has been mentioned, the Internet has a lot to answer for but it gives a voice to people who generally wouldn’t be able to hold up in a pub argument. They are lightweight and ineffectual, since my time on the internet I’m amazed at some of the views put forward and how vindictive people can be… but only on the internet. It’s the price we pay for ‘free speech’ and a worldwide audience.
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Georgaki-pyrovolitis
September 25, 2014 at 8:31 am
heh…george wont let me…ill come to the george ( pub) before the game see whos around…have a pint…
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A truly great piece – as is usually the case on here. I have commented just once before but have had the pleasure of reading the writings and fantastic comments it generates. I will just like to make one point in reference to @Rajat’s ; think you may have been too optimistic about the Arsenal fan base, which unfortunately is way worse on facebook than what comes from blogging. Try to imagine an Arsenal fb group with close to 10,000 members with 95% of these so irrationally negative and constantly abusive to the club(management, players and all) they claim to love.
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New post up. well sort of new, well another one. well…………http://wp.me/37nXa
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