Confucius once said “Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?”
As I sit here and pen this post, I’m reminiscing the past grandeur our fan base once possessed. We were a joyous bunch renowned for getting behind the team and the manager. We were united as a Club.
But today, we’re a completely mess. Divided into two halves, dolling out vitriol at one another. But amidst all this, there is one man with his stoic persona, still carrying on, immune to the commotion and anarchy our fan base has created. I happened to stumble across a video on YouTube last night, in which Wenger was booed and abused by Gooners as he was on his way to his coach, post the Stoke City game. The first sense I was evoked by, was that of sheer disgust at the reaction from the bunch of classless cretins, which immediately turned into a feeling of guilt and embarrassment as I saw the expression on that man’s face. It was pretty obvious he was shocked by what he heard, but he carried on, like he always has. I’d like to make one thing very clear here. I’m not writing this post just to vouch for Arsene or why we need to believe in him. But rather, also to remind our fan base that one of the most important things in life is to respect one another.
It’s been 18 long years since Wenger’s been at the helm of this great football club. Given us moments of great joy that will be cherished forever and spoken in football folklore. I’m a grateful man, and I’d like to thank him for giving me some of the best moments of my life, right from that Wiltord night at Old Trafford, to that Ramsey moment at Wembley. From that Ray Parlour bomb against Chelsea to that Patrick Vieira sublimity against Leicester, in the club’s greatest ever season. Simply put, these are moments I’ll take with, to my grave. But, it is beyond the realms of my understanding as to how can you abuse a man of such measure? I understand, that people have opinions and we have to respect those opinions regardless of us agreeing to It or not. But why abuse? Let’s take out everything from this. Arsene Wenger just for his seniority of age deserves to be respected. I’m not even going to dwell into what this man has done for this football club. But I have one question!
Whatever happened to “Remember who you are, what you are and who you represent”?
Is it that, our fan base has forgotten about it or are completely oblivious to it?
I take immense pride in supporting the Arsenal, and every Arsenal fan should, and, the basic obligation for a supporter, is to get behind the team. You can raise questions, be critical and disagree with the calls taken by the manager, but at the end of it all, the most important thing is to support and respect. To quote Wenger;
“We’re are at our strongest, when we are together”.
At this moment, we’re not, and, it looks like we will be divided for some time to come. But, all I ask of our supporters is to not stoop to the levels of mediocrity with your support. Football is supposed to be a game that unites, not divide. I plead with you, let’s not do this to ourselves.let’s not treat the club’s greatest signing with such odious character assassination. There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel, and I see us being led into that light by the great man. But please, he doesn’t deserve this. He deserves better. To quote him once again, before I end this;
“If you do not believe you can do it, then you have no chance at all”
‘Victoria Concordia Crescit’
@OptimisticAkash
Positively Arsenal 
Now that is a much more measured response, no ranting, no finger pointing, promoting the positive – thank you
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I fully agree with this. Utterly disgraceful towards the manager, and this will only lead to one thing and that is that players and other managers will not go to the Arsenal if this is the way they’re treated.. We need to get behind the team, and support!
And one short point to share is that last season the champions-to-be Man City lost away from home to Cardiff City 3-2, away at Aston Villa 3-2, and away at Sunderland 1-0 in the first 11 rounds of the PL.
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I wish I can be this cool-headed after watching dt video.
Thanks for a well articulated post.
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Great post – thanks for giving hard times the perspective they need. Sort out the injuries and we compete with the best.
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Those trying to imply that the arrogance/ignorance of the board and the manager led to the action(s) of the fans seem to be more stupid than those they are defending.
We set our expectations for the club based on our judgement so I see no reason why we should think our expectations must be met as we want them.
I’m very sure that most of our fans never thought we’ll win the league this season as they all believe Chelsea and Manchester city are far more ahead of us. If that is true, then I see no reason for this anger as we are still on course to remain in the top four no matter how poor we seem to be for now.
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A very sober and sensible piece. Thanks
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Six months on from winning the FA Cup.
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“Remember who you are…”
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Well said Sir.
Yesterday a little piece of what Arsenal are supposed to be, died; thanks to some wilfully ignorant 20 year old clowns.
For shame.
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The sad thing is that the vast majority of our travelling fans are? or, used to be? our 12th man, out shouting Old Trafford and Anfield. Can’t believe that this has changed or am I very wrong? Doesn’t take many idiots to give the wrong impression.
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Having just watched some Youtube clips, ArsenalFan TV in particular, can’t help feeling that Claude should stay at home. If you’re reading, Ty, well done mate.
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I keep hearing about this video, can anyone post a link or point me toward where I may see it?
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sadly they hardly represent the majority of arsenal fans but are the ones that were heard…i hope the players will seriously settle down and stop conceding rubbish goals and making life harder for themselves… don’t get me started on Taylor and his manual on not-referring a match!
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I was away at the weekend so I’ve missed most of this debacle and the fall out. But funnily enough, when I heard the half-time score I was utterly forlorn and fearing the worst, but the full time result despite not garnering any points gave me great hope. We fought back from a terrible position. Unlike some of the fairweather fans, the players never gave up – that is something we can build on.
Thanks for the post Akash, it’s full of perspective, which seems to be in short supply in some quarters.
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Havnt seen the clip and probably won’t the thought of it sickens me. If only those fans could show as much guts as the team did in the second half. If they are about 20 ish they only Arsene and haven’t seen real failure they obviously wouldn’t even be supporting the club if we were relegation candidates like we have been previously.
The problem is they are talksport followers and believe what they hear. They don’t understand the station hates us and treating them like the jackasses they undoubtedly are.
We most be the most successful club to have demonstrations against it by its own fans in history.
For years now Arsene has keeped the spuds quite and now they are openly laughing at us because of our fans its the biggest own goal in football history.
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Some good shots of the players training at Colney for the Turkish trip this morning – a £ for anyone who can put a name to every face though !
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I am told Arsene has named the side to start tomorrow already;
Szczesny; Debuchy, Mertesacker, Chambers, Bellerin; Oxlade-Chamberlain, Flamini, Ramsey; Campbell, Sanogo, Podolski
With six youngsters on the bench: Akpom, Zelalem, Kamara, O’Connor, Iwobi, Maitland-Niles
So there !
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Pass, the Orcs’ home record isn’t that bad. Expecting to take three points away from Mordor was never going to be easy and less so with a depleted squad.
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Thats the thing. Including Saturday our last seven trips to Mordor have been L L D D W W L (going backwards chronologically). It’s a difficult game for most of the “Big” teams.
The thing that bothers me about the Wenger in/out “debate” (as if any of us have a say anyway) is that it keeps us from talking about what is happening on the pitch.
The funny thing is if Chambers makes his header which for the life of me I can’t figure out how he missed, or Giroud makes his the game would have been very different. As they say the margins are fine. How many teams though would of had a chance to come away with points down 3-0 at halftime away to Stoke and Taylor. Chambers makes that header 999/1000 times. I really can’t wrap my head around that one.
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Stops us talking about what goes on on the pitch – stops us enjoying what goes on on the pitch – spot on Blaise
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Gains, that’s the point – a real fan would realise that a depleted squad, plus away at Stoke (where we rarely do well) plus Anthony Taylor (the worst ‘referee’ in the history of the PL) could = not doing so well. Going 3 nil down in the first half was unexpected and not really good enough, but pulling back 2 goals, which could have been more with better finishing and better refereeing, should take some of the sting out of the result. Chelski losing also helped me to come to terms with things. Football is a funny old game, and unexpected results do not just happen to us! The ‘special one’ is not so special after all – lose one of your key players to injury and lets see how you do, compared to a team that has 2/3rds of it’s first team out injured. Perspective seems to be the key missing ingredient for some of the malcontents in our fanbase. Real life sucks sometimes and the good guys do not always come out on top. A healthy individual learns to roll with the punches.
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A5 give me the pound ill name them all most of them have trained with the first team before if not all and have all played European competition before
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Come round the George on Saturday – I shall buy you a beer
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Great sentiments and very well written. But in reality, it was just a very small number of fcukwits, who probably have underlying issues. The hotheads will lose the battle they have created in their own heads, there is no way they would have any effect whatsoever on our managers future. Have a feeling there will be a very conspicuous show of support for wenger at the next home game.
Looks like Charlie Adam has got away with his…erm…challenge
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Football?
Southampton defender makes as big an error as you could see to provide the assist for ManU’s opener. Think that was the highly rated Fonte with the moment to forget. Could excuse him if he was a nineteen year old rookie who’d been juggling two positions (because of injuries). Fuck it. I’ll excuse him anyway. It happens…
Utd like Arsenal not finding it easy to get in behind the best defence to date in the league but they were aided by a huge error there.
Smalling who I thought was one of Utds better players in N5 (he’s not bad – one of the CBs AFC were linked with ) comes off with injury. The draw could be on!
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Saints looking more dangerous then they did against the AFC back line to me but they’ve gifted the opponents a goal
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bit surprised that Ajayi is not in the squad for Gala tomorrow, he was sub on saturday and trained with the squad today, but O’Connor is in ahead of him
our youth team will be well depleted for their match v Gala with all those young lads with the seniors.
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Yup, sure enough the Saints find the back of the net and grab an equaliser. Maybe Arsenal did defend well against them? Whisper it whilst treading softly in case you upset any fools: you watched the game!
Pelle clearing up in the box to grab the goal. Hayden really impressed me with his performance opposite the Italian striker in the league cup. A shame he’s been injured when he might have more minutes.
(Is he back for the gala game?)
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Unless ManYoo are as extraordinarily lucky tonight as they were against us they are on for a doing tonight
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A sympathetic and sensible piece in the Guardian
http://tinyurl.com/olhwyx7
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50% lucky/ 50% Saints failed to put their chances away when in control
Luck lucky Louis
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Yes, they were lucky , but we could certainly do with some of their efficiency in front of goal. Sometimes, they will be reasonably good, other times lucky, but for the rest of this season, when they are neither good nor lucky, they will be helped. Have a feeling this year is about getting Utd back in the top four, whatever the cost, and perhaps the sort of refereeing performances we are on the end of is part of that.
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Sounds about right to me ‘coll.
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Mandy, the injuries are the worry, if some can make it back over the next week that’ll be good news.
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And Arsenal play tomorrow!
In Istanbul. Should be interesting. Hayden will’ve been unlucky if he’s still out. Rosicky has a niggle?
Gala are, not surprisingly after what we’ve seen behind Besiktas in their league. Those knockout qualifiers were as intense and draining as the Udinese games, Arsenal played well (if Chambo’s late effort had’nt met a great save they’d have taken home a polished 0-1 lead).
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This is one of the guys claiming to behind the abuse Wenger received getting onto the train in Stoke.
https://mobile.twitter.com/AFC_Jim
Looking through just the first page of tweets, his words say more about this calibre of a person than I ever could! A man this angry is heading for some bad health.
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Arsenal are pathetic, just after missing out on another great chance to replace Wenger, Houston Dynamo have appointed Owen Coyle as their manager, how could Arsenal let it happen, its not the boo boys did not tell us Coyle was the man to replace Wenger. why Arsenal why
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Whatever happened to Luke Shaw I wonder – I would have thought he would have been keen to play tonight.
Did the Ox really cripple him or was he just unlucky ?
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Talking of the Disappeared does anyone anywhere have any information whatsoever about Theo ?
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Or info on the lesser spotted missing Gnabry?
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Gnabry is said to be in the USA for treatment on his knee injury. Theo had an injection last week on his groin injury, if that does not fit it then he will have to have an operation.
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Walcott and Gnabbers with possibly predictable niggles and delays, as long as they didn’t rush themselves back too early (Falcao?) they should both hopefully be ok
Don’t think Shaw wasn’t really fit to start that game, he was probably in the old watchyoumacallit the redthingy the old how can you be short at LB after buying nothing but LBs all summer long quandary
(The grass in Manchester is only so green because it rains so much)
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its clear with the team and especially the subs Wenger has named for the Gala game tomorrow that he cares not one iota what the moaners have to say, Martinez, O’Connor, Kamara, Zelalem, Maitland-Niles, Iwobi, Akpom who have a combined 7+3 competitave appearances between them for Arsenal’s first team, Martinez with 7+1 of those, God you have to love Wenger when he does things like this, no matter how the games turns out, the bannerwankers, the trainstationyobs and all the rest of the mongs can go fuck themselves is the clear message.
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Eduardo if possible in think Ramsey and others might have got a rest too
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“Chuba is very close to the first team”
IBSF
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http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/dec/08/booing-arsene-wenger-arsenal-fans-media?CMP=twt_gu
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Utd getting all of Red Noses old luck. They’ll cling to the top 4 now like a floozy to a billionaire.
Southampton are now suffering from fixture list congestion and don’t have a big squad, bit like us actually. Arsenal have superior talent and will overtake them and West Ham by the end of the holidays.
This might give us a base camp to aim higher, I’ve not given up on this season yet.
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The skunk nutmegged Southampton’s keeper twice. It’s like he did it on purpose, the bastard.
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I finally saw the video. No wonder doomers were getting their shit kicked after the game.
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That Ronay article was quite good. Thanks for posting, Georgaki.
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Ronay writes well. I remember a nice piece he wrote about meeting Arsene on a TV gantry during the 2012 Euros. Or at least I think it was the Euros. Of course, to the semi-impartial viewer, Arsene is a real enigma. Intelligent, visionary, principled – yet seemingly incapable of the most obvious of footballing analysis’s. The brilliant mind who can’t even make himself a cup of tea sort of idea. Actually, come to think of it, he is a real enigma to the totally partial supporter too.
Which is why I love him, of course, because there is always the chance of something out of the ordinary, just as there is also the extreme likelihood of embarrassing capitulation. Perhaps its a function of his upbringing, or rather his birthplace. Strasbourg. Geographically German but resolutely turning its back on the Fatherland, embracing instead all the romance of La Belle France. Note the gender differentiation, not that there is anything weak about the feminine, far from it in fact, but perhaps explaining romantic yearnings as opposed to strict functionality. More Loraine, if you like, than Alsatian. Rubbish – stereotypical nonsense: sorry.
The makings of an article there I think, but not for now. So thanks anyway to Barney Ronay, and thanks in particular to him for creating that third group: we now have AKB, WOB and VSF.
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Where was Foster under that deep cross?
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Eddie Glazer is cash in in his chips at Old Trafford and selling a big chunk of his Utd. shares his dad gave him. At least he has the decency to wait until he died.
The money: £30m estimated, is going straight into the Glazer elastic-pants pockets, not for re-investment in the club. I’m not big fan of our Stan but as far as I know the £3mhe got from Arsenal was for some business advisor services, and considering the sponsorship deals coming in seems cheaper than if we got 3rd parties in to do that for us.
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