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
Now. Part 2 from Andrew @anicoll5
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.
Positively Arsenal 
Ramsey taken from behind. Carry on.
Rose stamped on 2 players, Ox, then Wilshere. No problem. Certainly no 2 penalties, according to beachball lad.
There’s no home ref today. Indeed, he’s taking up the mike Dean role nicely.
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Disappointing to earn a point. Other than the goal they had zero chances.
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I’m glad we managed to fight back for the point. Arteta and Ramsey out was a big blow and we’ll really miss them the next two very big games. Unless Diaby can step up, we are lacking some dynamism and physicality there. We had the chances and the possession but just not that le that in our combination play in the final third. Will take a bit of time maybe. Good job Chambers and the Ox.
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g69 @ 7:28 pm – I wouldn’t say they had zero chances but their best chance we gifted to them; from a rollout by the keeper for fuck’s sake. Unbelievable.
Spurs set up to counter-attack and we were not effective with our attacking system until the 2nd half. From then on we pounded them. It seems we switched from going down the middle and to attacking from the flanks and in the entire 2nd half there was only one team in the race.
On Twitter, the uber-fans are moaning that we only fought back for a draw. It is as if they are dissappointed we didn’t lose so they have no pretext to criticize Wenger on tactics and team selection. They can’t even blame him for the injuries since these were players who just happened to have been rotated out of last week’s team. The amount of experts who think we should have smashed them is only matched by a refusal to acknowledge that this is a derby and all form goes through the window.
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Not the best result but after 2 injuries during the game not the worst.
If I were Per or Kos I would not be happy running up for a corner just to run straight back after a woeful delivery.
Maybe we’d be better just kicking the corner straight out for a goal kick anyway, it’d be safer.
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Okay, so whose fault was it that we didn’t win? I could not get a ticket for this one try as I might, so I have not seen the game yet.
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Well, I think I’m more disappointed about the injuries than the result. What the hell is going on? We’ll have no players left soon at this rate. It is very worrying
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Must be our new fitness coach’s fault. It’s someone to blame (banned thingy)
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According to Arsenal.com, job vacancies section, there are over 3,000 supporting staff each match day.
There are 5 in the Disability Support staff, 4 of whom are commentary team members for the blind and visually impaired spectators.
I assume two will be for the visiting team. Perhaps, some the self-styled Arsenal “fans” are listening to the wrong commentary?
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WTF is wrong with our fans?
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It was a funny old game that I actually enjoyed. Thought we were building quite nicely until Arteta came off, and it was then notable how we lost comfortable possession of the midfield for a while. I was a little worried (as I have been all season) about the lack of real opportunities we seemed to create in the first half, and they almost seemed to have the clearer cut chances, especially in the period towards half-time when we were still adjusting to the loss of Ramsey on top of Arteta. I was surprised that we didn’t get a penalty when Jack was injured in their box – and even more surprised about the lack of fuss about it on the Sky commentary.
The second half started brightly until we gave away a silly soft goal, conceding possession in an area it just didn’t need to be conceded in. But from one nil down we were much more positive and it was good rip-roaring stuff. Mesut the Marvellous had a great game, running more than anyone it seemed and always threatening to create chances. My eyes are not what they were, but I was sure Per had scored but apparently the ball was not nearly as over the one as I thought I’d seen. The goal when it came was a huge relief, and reminded me of the Ozil goal against Everton just before Christmas last year. a cunning dummy from Welbeck leaving the Ox with a clear-cut chance that he buried with huge enthusiasm. With the momentum with us I felt sure we would go on to win, but they defended stoutly and we lacked the nous to win the sort of penalty that other teams seem to get right at the end of matches. Perhaps towards the end we need to make defenders take a few more risks rather than always looing to pass our way around them. So a decent draw, and on we go.
The injuries are of course a worry, and without being too pessimistic I fear we will not see the captain play much more for the club. It seemed rather a quiet and defeated sort of injury somehow, while the Ramsey hamstring is perhaps the reason why this season has not been quite as he would have wished it – maybe his body has been trying to tell him something for a while. Whatever, it is a real shame, and we can only hope that Diaby gets his chance to play soon – and also that Gnabry is almost ready to join the party.
We are a bit Curate’s egg at the moment, but I saw plenty of signs today that things are gently clicking back into shape.
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i am telling you..there is no coach better than Arsene in the world of football who can manage arsenal right now..i never get into who’s a “good” fan topic ..but if ever the team needs its fans to come alive its right now ..be grateful i say!
we were clearly the better team today..unfortunate that we did not win..my telecast never showed any replays of whether the ball went in..it looked to me the ball rolled back a little after hugo lloris made that really good save..any idea anyone?
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George @ 10:10 pm – Are you surprised by the moaning twats on twitter? Bitter and dissappointed because we come from behind to draw. So how would they feel if we lost?
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“I was surprised that we didn’t get a penalty when Jack was injured in their box – and even more surprised about the lack of fuss about it on the Sky commentary.”
Really? Are you new to watching Arsenal? That is par for the course for our team unfortunately. It would be a different story if another team lost 3 players to injury during the course of a game.
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Again the ref plays a big part in this game three spud players should have been booked before the ox went into the book for his first challenge. Spuds were wasting time early in the first half and the ref just didnt work out what was going on.
When we equalized and was going for it the spud players kept falling to the floor and the ref stopped the game, no head injuries he just kept dropping the game. Obviously we lost momentum and then to only give 5 minutes injury time was a joke. I didn’t think we looked like conceding until flamini really and yes the injuries did make a big difference not least because with another two tactical subs we probably would have turned it around
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George asks “what’s the matter with our fans?”. If you couldn’t enjoy yesterday’s match as a game of football that delivered many if not most of the things you would be looking for in a Derby match between two good sides, then I would suggest that you aren’t really that keen on football.
So if you are not keen on football then you would only follow a side to glory in winning all the time, or because of some strange masochistic urge that you probably need to seek help for.
And I can’t see that The Arsenal would entirely satisfy either of those possibilities. So by some tortuous logic which perhaps explains why I was never a great mathematician it follows that you should only support The Arsenal if you really love football.
Which some of our fans clearly don’t: ergo they are not fans at all and should not be dignified with being treated as such.
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I believe the behavior on several Arsenal sites – especially during the games – really reflects the basic personality of the posters more than differences in opinion. Many sites go into whiny meltdown whenever we aren’t leading several goals. Often it’s the same people who’re calling for grit and loyalty from the players. Some people just seem to be drawn to the dark side. Maybe they’re unconsciously trying to protect themselves from disappointment by looking at things as pessimistically as possible? That, as I’ve stated before, really makes being a Goner is a punishment in itself. If you look at the actual opinions, they’re often not that far apart. The only thing I find inexcusable is insulting club legends like Wenger. Those who do so simply haven’t been raised right. And why should one treat someone who doesn’t realize what ‘respect’ means with respect?
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I thought it was a very good game, typical NLD… only needed us to win to make it a perfect NLD. The injuries are worrying and Flamini losing the ball in midfield to give the Spuds the goal was unforgivable. I’ve put a new post up on GunnersorArse George, none of this post match report malarky but something all you positivistas will love. A look at Wengers French arrogance. Mon dieu!
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New post from DC http://wp.me/p37nXa-14O
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I’ll bet my balls they’ll be overjoyed Shotta! I am disappointed we didn’t win as we were the only team trying to win it. The spuds defended with their lives (Kaboul playing like a man possesed) and made it difficult for us. That said, I am very pleased with the performance of the team and a few individual ones and but for Flamini being sloppy for their goal, it would’a been another one-nil to the Arsenal! Now bring on Gala!
On a side note, phuck the phonies! Let the real gooners stand up and be counted. “We have just one job to do!……..just the one job”!
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