With Aston Villa’s relegation now confirmed there is a whiff of the end of term about the place. The last rites have been read to Bolton and Dagenham & Redbridge and people are anointing probable winners in each of the divisions except for the fourth where Northampton are already champions. Mrs Black is making noises about airing out the Elddis with a view to dragging the old girl to the seaside for a fortnight and all over the country people are wrestling with big decisions concerning new flip flops and the location of last year’s sun lotion.
Our good friends Mike and Kelly Wood are already on vacation, not waiting for the bell at the end of the last class, and certainly not concerned about the factor 40 after a week freezing their haggises off in bonnie Scotland. They, along I suspect with you and the rest of the PA faithful, are not interested in this end of season ennui – not one bit of it. They’ve braved the howling cold and sleet of Britain in spring time partly to catch up with friends and family but also for the opportunity to cheer Arsenal towards the finish line, both this afternoon and on Thursday evening.
They aren’t buying into refrain that it’s all over now, and not just because Mike prefers the Beatles to the Stones. As long as there are enough points on the buffet table we must hope that Arsène and the boys have the appetite to go and grab them and that Leicester and Spurs can still spectacularly drop their plates and end up with devilled eggs on their faces. Okay, so the food metaphors may be a little stretched, but I’m writing this before breakfast so you’ll have to forgive me.
The realists tell us optimists that third is the best we can hope for and that settling for fourth might be the more probable outcome. I’m less comfortable predicting the future especially in this most unpredictable of seasons, but if we are in a dog fight with the giant spenders of City and United for that third spot, we need to scrap for every point from now until the final final whistle.
I know it feels wrong to be approaching May and not looking forward to an FA Cup final. That’s the price we pay for supporting a club which has been so successful in recent seasons; it seems a let down to ‘only’ be battling it out with super rich clubs for third place. Can you imagine how fans of almost every other team look at the whining hordes who claim to support Arsenal moaning about only getting a top four finish?
Having said that I know that it isn’t only Arsenal has to carry the baggage of malcontents and attention seeking children. Look at Newcastle’s wobs. Their vitriolic campaign to oust Pardew turned out really well didn’t it? In fact just look at society in general never mind football in isolation. The culture of objectifying individuals in dumb imitation of the tabloid press, whether they be football managers, actors, politicians, or whatever, is, and has been for some time now, endemic and lamentable.
From the booing in the stadium to the on-line vilification and abuse there are people out there who treat others not as fellow human beings but as mere objects, playthings for their own corrosive amusement. I thought of players like Aaron Ramsey when I read Jon Ronson’s interview with Monica Lewinsky in the Guardian yesterday. They were discussing another figure of public hate and ridicule, Mike Daisey, who said ‘I’d never had the opportunity to be the object of hate before. The hard part isn’t the hate. It’s the object.’. Lewinsky herself talked about how surprised people were that she didn’t just ‘crawl under a rock and die’ after being hounded and humiliated and becoming just a human butt for the jokes of television’s sarcastic and spiteful.
When Stoke fans boo Aaron their most fervent hope (in as much as they think at all) is to drive him and his talent under that very same rock. To inhibit him and his expression of his art to the detriment of Arsenal and the benefit of their own. When Arsenal fans join in and heap abuse on him too, the thing becomes horribly cannibalistic. Salvador Dali’s painting at the top of the page is symbolic of a nation eating itself alive and all the banner waving, abuse throwing, objectifying of our manager and players from our own fans is much the same.
A self defeating, self loathing, masochistic mess of anti support through which the manager and players must wade every week and somehow still perform at their best. Don’t believe they don’t know about either. As Ronson’s excellent article says “Some people think on-line harassment is no big deal because only idiots read the negative comments, whereas sensible people simply ignore them. It’s even considered somewhat shameful to search your name and seek out the negative comments. The truth is that it may be idiotic, but it’s human.”
Perhaps we have something else to learn from Monica Lewinsky. Maybe we should actually pity the sad attention seeking, self defeating narcissists who seem to fill every waking moment with finding new ways to vilify our most successful manager and some of our players. Maybe they are trying to tear down the thing they love because, quite simply they aren’t very well. Lewinsky’s life is in large part dedicated to combating on-line bullying and her words ring true when seen through the prism of our experience with the agents of abuse among our own support, “Don’t bully the bully. It doesn’t move the conversation forward. I see bullying as similar to cutting. People who cut are trying to localise their pain. I think with bullying, people are suffering for myriad reasons and are projecting it. Instead of cutting themselves, they’re cutting someone else.”
So in the words of PG Wodehouse, perhaps these people are to be pitied and not censured. Certainly I feel sorry for anyone who can’t enjoy the thrilling denouement to what has been a fascinating season. We begin today three points ahead of Man United and one behind their neighbours. Lose ground on those two and we are staring into the abyss that is fifth place. Today’s battle with Crystal Palace is far from an end of term dead rubber. We may not be fighting for our lives at the bottom nor for the main prize at the very top but there is still an enormous amount at stake today, on Thursday, and in the subsequent four matches.
Crystal Palace sit eight points outside the relegation zone and with fifteen points still on the table will not be turning up just to make up the numbers and entertain our transatlantic visitors. We face teams either battling for a European place, fighting to avoid relegation or with the liberating knowledge that it’s all over and every single match will be a tough one, starting today. The players have to contend with the baying of the psychophysically damaged as they enter the fray and so it is vital that the rest of us, you and I included, make as much noise in their defence and in positive support as we possibly can between now and the fifteenth of May. There might not be a trophy waiting for us, we may be a little spoiled by recent success, but we still have plenty to play for. Let’s see if we can’t cheer the boys over the line.
Positively Arsenal 
Bright start, lots of inventive attacking play but no real goal threat
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25 minutes – iwobi ball is just too strong for alexis and defender gets in to take it away
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31 minutes – Alexis fails to control the ball on the six yard line from a monreal cross
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35 minutes – loads of possession, lots of good passing, but have so far failed to trouble the keeper.
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37 minutes – welbeck wins free kick about 30 yards out, alexis takes it, deflects out for a corner
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JB™ @gunnerpunner 7m7 minutes ago
We should deliberately give them a corner so we can get some of their players to leave their own area.
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42 minutes – great one two between ozil and alexis, sees Ozil shot saved
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44 minutes – wickham with a free header at a free kick, heads over
2 minutes to be added, should be about 5, CP have been time wasting
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45 minutes – welbeck wins the ball back from a defender, and lofts it into Alexis who heads it lob style over the keeper
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Lovely chipped pass from Welbeck after good closing down. Pardew won’t be happy but we are!
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HT: 1-0
totally deserved lead, Palace will now have to change their game plan, its been 10 men behind the ball for most of the half from them.
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Palace entombed in their box throughout the first 45 – hopefully we can seal the sarcophagus for eternity with a couple of more
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57 minutes – ozil close with a curling freekick
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63 minutes – adebadwhore comes on for palace
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64 minutes – welbeck shot hits keeper in the face and is cleared
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65 minutes – alexis heads wide from ozil pass
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68 minutes – ozil takes a quick free kick and alexis heads inches wide, oh so close
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69 minutes – adebadwhore offside
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70 minutes – monreal shot blocked out for a corner, nacho needed to hit that on the volley
Bellerin is taking a touch or two too many before putting in his crosses, its giving palace time to get more men back
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72 minutes Dann with an awful tackle on Welbeck, he is rightly booked
looks like giroud and ramsey are set to come on
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74 minutes – welbeck off Giroud on, iwobi off Ramsey on
welbeck with an assist today, and came close one other time and iwobi found it tough to make a big impact today, missed a good headed chance
cech tips over a free header at a corner, second corner cleared
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77 minutes – Giroud has a flick saved
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78 minutes – Coquelin overhits a pass to Giroud
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81 minutes – 1-1, bolaise hits a shot form edge of the area, and cech gets a hand to it but it still goes in, totally against the run of play.
come on arsenal step it up again.
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finally the crowd wake up and get behind the team for a few minutes
83 minutes – walcott on for elneny
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86 minutes – ozil free kick, gabriel heads it straight at the keeper
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arsenal have had so far, 21 efforts at goal, 6 on target
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only 4 minutes of injury time to be added
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again? what is it?
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92 minutes – gabriel with a great tackle on zaha save us after kos makes an awful mistake
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in to the last 30 seconds
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must we concede these strange goals after failing to score loads of chances?
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ref blows final whistle just as alexis is taking a shot form edge of the area
once again we blow a lead in a game we almost totally dominated, been the story of the season so far.
no home win for AFC in London derbies this season
lost to whu and cfc
drew with thfc and cpfc
fared little better in away london derbies
beat cpfc
drew with thfc and whu
lost to cfc
7pts from 24 in london derbies this season.
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just not clinical enough, too many miscontrols in good attacking positions, too many taking extra touches when shot on(monreal for example done it twice today, the second one led directly to the cp breakaway that they scored from),
the tempo was too slow first half, really stepped it up for a while in the second half, but failed to get that second goal. Once it went 1-1 we were all over the place, but at the back and in attack.
Once again another opportunity to make up points on our rivals is spurned. I think that is 16 pts dropped form winning position this season.
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We have failed to win exactly half our games this season
P48, W24, D10, L14, and in the league it is almost the same ratio –
P33, W17, D9, L7,
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OptaJoe @OptaJoe 17m17 minutes ago
1 – Arsenal have won just one London derby in league competition this season; their fewest since the 1963/64 campaign (1)
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Paddy @VieiraPaddy 18m18 minutes ago
Don’t even talk to me about Bellerin, Jesus has a better record with crosses
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Tim Hardwicke @Arselona 36m36 minutes ago
If I wasn’t an Arsenal fan I would find this hilarious
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We paid the price for not getting that 2nd goal. Despite the build-up play we just couldn’t create decent chances and nobody was able to create something from nothing. Too bad for those who think football is just buying players and hoping for the best.
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yes shotta, despite all the nice neat passes, we were not creating clear cut chances, and for me no one trying to create something form nothing, it was all “no, you have it”. No one seems prepared to just have a lash at goal, Monreal’s two chances summed it up, taking it down and trying to be precise, with the second time actually leading to their goal. I don’t know if its something they are told to do, as in always look for whoever might be in a better position, or if it is down to a lack of confidence or the moral courage to be the one that forces the game on.
Our subs on also did not work out today, we dropped a level with the changes, Walcott looked lost or more precise, he looked completely shot of confidence, his first dribble just summed him up of late, got the ball, looked like he had acres to run into, never speeded up, jogged into a tackle, lost it, fell over, where is the Theo of anfield cl game, where he just took off, went at them, forced the issue, made the goal. Today it looked like, in that instance, he just wanted to pass it off, no one ahead showing for it, and he did not know what to do. There is a top player in there, but I do not know if we will ever see it in an arsenal shirt again.
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Andy @yorkshiregunner 2h2 hours ago
Arsenal are like Eric Morecambe’s piano playing.
Play all the right passes but not necessarily in the right places.
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I’m sick and tied of the fight.
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afcstuff @afcstuff 23m23 minutes ago
Mesut Özil created eight goalscoring opportunities today, zero of which were converted. #afc
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Come on Georgie….. don’t give up mate, there’s always next season!
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2nd goal we would have had the points there no bother. Still we held on for the point and did not concede a second Palace goal – one for the statisticians to puzzle over there.
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Next season ?
There is Thursday – Pulis and his boys looking for a first result in Tony’s career at the Ems
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No time for whingeing and feeling sorry for ourselves – games to be played and points won to finish as high as we can.
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Wenger: “We need to repair the mental damage and focus on the next game.”
he also said we did not create enough chances.
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Yes Andy….. but what will be playing for….. fucking 4th once again, come on mate, we were handed the EPL on a fucking plate this season and fucked up big time. So for me time to rebuild and get ready for next season.
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up against pulis and fat sam teams in our next two games. Worryingly the team is playing well below its capabilities at the moment, and looks very flat and down on itself. I feel its too late in the season to expect the team to suddenly find its best form. There has been too many flat performance this season. the team looks like the almost feel sorry for themselves. If results go against us in the next week, we could very well be seeing a day we have not seen for 20 years, with 3 games of the season still left, as spurs are 5pts ahead as things stand, with both teams having two games in next 8 days.
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