Cormac and I enjoy wide ranging conversations on our evening dog walks. He’s nineteen now and in common with most chaps in their late teens is a wealth of fascinating knowledge and dubious facts. Spending his life at the hi-tech coal face of information technology and being a ‘stuff’ magnet he has learned and read up on loads of stuff. Much of this he likes to share with me whether I want to hear it or not. Sometimes his subject matter is about as grounded as the flat earthers and evolution deniers with whom I entertain myself on Twitter, but just occasionally my ears prick up as he drops an intellectual stone into the pond of my thoughts and I stand momentarily entranced by the ripples as they spread and dissipate across the still waters.
Yesterday evening he was telling me about one of his favourite e-sports which he abbreviates to ‘League’. He was discussing the rapid growth in the game’s popularity and the financial rewards available to the world’s best players. What made me sit up and take notice were the parallels between his world and my own. So often these seem simply not to exist. The very best players enjoy only a short career at the top, he said, because the mental strain and sheer hours of work involved in getting good enough to compete are not sustainable. Most of the top players have to earn their corn on streaming websites after retirement – the e-sports version of the pundit. The difference being that these guys are widely loved and respected.
The biggest similarity between our two sports however turned out to be the fans. He was bemoaning the change that has come over followers of ‘League’ since the big money rewards began to flood in. Whereas folk used to be content to cheer and applaud, commiserate and admire they are now far more likely to deride their favourite teams and individuals if they fail to perform. E-fans have, it appears, gone from open mouthed astonishment at the skill of the professionals, recognising that no one not engaged in serious daily training and a dedication beyond the reach of most mortals could hope to reach such heights, to a snide, overly critical complaint driven appreciation of their efforts.
What galls Cormac most of all is the stay at home gamers who come up with nonsense like ‘Why did he try that move? Ridiculous, he should have done x, y or z instead’. These people have no clue what it feels like to play outside of their own bedroom, or to perform in front of an audience and with huge amounts of money and prestige at stake. No idea of the different pressures involved and no understanding of how much work goes into being where the professionals are. In short they are armchair managers yelling at their betters.
When I said how uncannily familiar his words were he asked about this strange three dimensional, tactile sport of mine. I outlined the civil war between fans and idiots and explained the terms AKB and WOB to him. He looked confused especially after I’d said that there was a third body sitting painfully on a fence of their own making imagining the slight elevation in some way equated to the moral high ground. These people like to shout ‘A pox on both your houses’ and suggest that the AKBs and the WOBs are as bad as each other.
How, he asked, can people who’s main argument is that a professional football manager knows more than they do about managing a professional football team be as bad as amateurs who think they know more than the professional? How can someone with no experience of management possibly presume to tell a top manager with years in the game how to do his job? And how on earth can those two opposing views be ‘as bad as each other’?
How indeed my son, how indeed.
Well, I thanked him for his thoughts and especially for providing me with those first and most difficult 668 words of tomorrow’s blog and we went our separate ways. Today is a sad day for us on PA because today is the first match in a while where we shall be deprived of the company of Mike and Kelly who flew back in time or forwards or some weird Star Trek shit as they headed home to Alabama. The first team were unbeaten during their stay, two draws and a win not a bad return, hopefully when they come back next year it’ll be at least three wins.
I see Man City did their bit yesterday stuffing Stoke four none to keep the thrilling end to the season steaming forward. I don’t know about you but I love this pressure as three teams battle to secure that vital third place and avoid the play off rounds which so interrupt the flow of pre-season. It lends a real tension to final few fixtures and neither Manchester clubs show any signs of letting us stroll to that all important guaranteed qualifying spot. To continue the game of leapfrog we’ve been enjoying with the blue half of Manchester we need to bring three points home from an away trip to a northern club managed by ‘Fat’ Sam Allardyce.
Never a prospect for the weak of knee nor trembly of tummy it is nonetheless an achievable one. The form table does, however, provide interesting reading. While we have only lost one of our previous six away from home, we have drawn half of those six games. A draw really doesn’t feel like enough today. Which is of course why hard facts are so much better than feelings. A draw would put us level with City and we still have to play them, so wouldn’t be a disaster at all. Like you though I am more human than Vulcan and cannot operate on cold facts alone. I experience football viscerally and a win would make me very much happier.
Sunderland are in a real scrap to save their premiership skins. They’ve only lost one of their previous six and that to champions elect Leicester City. Say what you like about the tactical approach of their manager he has been around the block a few times and anyone who thinks this will be a walk in the park needs a serious word with themselves. This promises to be just as tough a game as any we’ve faced recently.
West Brom may have provided the perfect warm up but thanks to the malcontents staying away the atmosphere was far better on Thursday night and that must have helped the players. The home fans today will create a cauldron of noise. A ref baiting cacophony in which our boys will need to keep their heads, their belief and their composure. I don’t anticipate a fast paced thriller. We will need to keep the ball and kill the atmosphere. They will press and harass and look for the quick counter punch to which fools think only Arsenal are vulnerable.
I wonder if Per was picked to give Gabby a break on Thursday. Maybe it was to restore some much needed calm and nous to our rearguard. I’d love to see him play again today because calmness is the kind of quality the very best bring to a game whatever the sport. Winning or losing, they keep their heads and keep doing the right thing. We as fans can lose our shit, scream at the telly and hide behind the sofa, because nothing we say or do ever has to stand up to scrutiny. The professionals do not have such luxury. Whatever team Arsène chooses today, whatever the result you and I shall remain resolutely behind the manager and players. This season may still have a few surprises in store and I for one am looking forward to them all.
Positively Arsenal 
Good morning Steww.
I can’t quibble with a word of that, and even if i did, I’d shut up about it.
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Morning dc – I’d welcome your quibbles. A quibble from a good egg is always a welcome quibble.
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Morning Stew, a rare old contest at the Stadium of Light awaits, winnable but it will reqire 90+ minutes of concentration.
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Agree with your thoughts on Per. There’s something very panicked about Gabriel in defence, like he knows he is never far away from a dropping a clanger.
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“In short they are armchair managers yelling at their betters”.
Indeed
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Let’s hope Deano allows us to play with 11 men.
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lovely stuff Stew,good old Cormac!
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Deano’s first Premier League outing with the Gunners since his little bit of trouble at Chelsea (ahem) – I am sure he will be keen to put in a solid performance to get back in the fans good-books. The 100k signature petition will be water under the Bridge.
11 red cards this season though – it would be a foolish player to take Mike’s good nature for granted.
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I would not be too worried about Gabriel blogon – He saved our nuts at the very end against Palace with Zaha steaming into the box in the 93rd minute. I think the problem is for all the back three is settling into some sort of regular partnership, so that each instinctively fits in with the other and knows when to take responsibility, and when to leave it.
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very interesing Steww,
Also interesting was Alan Smith’s suggestion, taken up by wobs, that after 20 years the players would have heard all of the team talks so the manager becomes les effective.
Firstly the GG teams had been together a long while and so they analogy may be true, however when you look at how long the players have been with the manager then it’s compleatly irrelevent. The other thing old smudger forgets is that man to man talks are personal and time specific. It is also strange that Alex ferguson or any of the old time greats which built footballing dynastys didnt come unser the same accusations. For a man who has degrees you would of thought he would have researched his theory a little more stringently.
As far as pundits commenting on a job they have never performed it reminds me of a study about industry in which it was suggested that because we promote people if they are doing a job well up until the point they are not doing it well and then they just stay there leaving lots of the workforce in positions they are not suited for, this is the same for punditry good footballers are giving a position they have little qualification for and even if they dont understand something have to comment on it anyway.
If you throw enough shit some of it will stick.
On Untold they have gone posted the dirty table and suggested that the black cats aren’t that black, however I believe the fat bloke will makes sure they are very aggressive against us today. The strange thing is with them needing a win we could be patient and maybe catch them on the counter, unless they are told to only try and win it in the last 15 minutes of course.
Most importantly COYG.
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Iwobi to score the winner against his uncle’s old manager? Will he get the start, a third in a week or will there be another combo today? Perhaps it will be Welbeck if he starts who will find the winner back at the club where he first caught the eye (on loan).
COYG!
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Oh dear. Poor old smudger was just reading from a script like some kind of mindless zombie. Preaching to the livng dead.
If he’d have paused to engage his decaying neurons he might have considered that over that twenty year window that the same players have not been at the club that whole time. Bless him for trying?
Kind of funny when you think about it.
And what can you say for an experienced adult who is happy to listen to and buy into such clear propaganda?
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The kind of person who believes that someone called “Stan” and not some kind of financial organisation or institution owns Arsenal Football Club and then makes posts online on blogs whilst pretending to be said “Stan”?
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Clearly the 14 managers that Tottingham appointed during the Wenger years must have produced a number of different “team talks” (even from Juande Ramos who never had time to learn English!) – that approach worked well Smudger
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PA at its finest. Cormac knows. How under god’s green earth do people give these bloggers and podcasters any credibility over the manager? 21 years at or around the top and they engage in the most insidious, deceitful campaign to undermine the most successful manager in the club’s history. Frankly I am not impressed by the occasional blog praising Arsene and then sneakily tearing him down in the next breath. Call me masochistic but I frequently listen to the leading Arsenal podcasts and it is unbelievable the sense of entitlement which they themselves deny for themselves. Most proclaim they are sure Arsenal can do better, not for one moment recognizing we could do a lot worse, Liverpool, Newcastle, Everton, Aston Villa come to mind.
A Sunderland blog, which Andrew Nic linked us to 2 days ago, put it very well:
“As late as the 1990s two cup wins in a row would have been hailed as a master stroke of achievement. It isn’t now and it’s a shame.
“Here is where it unravels though – it’s just today’s typical ‘top club’ Premier League fan – who moans about everything because she/he pays £100 a ticket and so believes they’re entitled to see their chosen team win the league isn’t it? I’m not sure and no one else is because this protest doesn’t seem to know what it’s really about, except that they’re a bit bored of Arsene Wenger. The absurdity of starting a campaign because you didn’t win the Premier League would be laughable, but that just might be it.”
This Wearsider has hit the nail on the head so accurately I am deadly afraid that they will be able to exploit our psychological vulnerability. As Shakespeare famously said:
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” especially when it is those closest to you who are seeking the first opportunity to behead you.
May the away fans be loud and boisterous in their support.
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The Black Cats will play deep and push up aggressively when there is a 50:50 ball anywhere in the their half hoping to spring Defoe on the break. They have this Chelsea boy at left back who loves to push up on the overlap and he can be dangerous. I love Per’s calmness and I love Gabriel’s speed. Having no experience as a manager I dare not tell Arsene what to do.
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last week I touched on the Wenger here 20 years stuff, and suggested that of course some players switch off due to having listened to the same things in training and in team talks etc, they even switch off and stop listening when the same person is even saying something new, its human nature. The difference between the coaching structure Alex red nose employed at Man U and what Arsene has here, is that fergie changed coaching staff on a regular basis, he had a new number 2 every few years. Wenger has only made changes when Bob Wilson and Pat Rice retired, promoting Steve Bould, Neil Banfield and Gerry Payton.
I suggested that there are three ways to freshen up the squad, to stop this happening, 1. major changes to the management or coaching staff
2. major changes to the playing staff
3, a combo of both 1&2
My feeling is that Wenger will make major changes to the playing squad this summer, partly enforced, partly planned, and will include some youths being promoted to the squad.
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Listening or reading the experiences of danny karbiasson, to the stats guy schooling the Arseblogger, from the likes of Klopp explaining what he has learnt from the arsenal’s tactics (be interesting to see how he develops his evolving “half-press” type thing he’s copying off the Arsenal, he doesn’t have any choice in this league – though he might need to go easy on the dieting pills) to plundits who never discuss such things as “tactics” (please refer to Smudger’s smudging above) it’s fair to say that those who don’t know don’t know anything about what goes on at Colney.
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The stats company the club bought that helped to bring in Koscielny, now Elneny etc. in spite of Grimandi’s pride in his scouts was just one change over the years *coughs*
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Very good read as Per usual, setting the right calm tones. And as fans that believe in always doing the right thing we shall be fully behind the boys.
Just allow me to get a rant in: May those petty words choke on whatever it is they can’t stomach about Arsenal.
As Millsie says: COYG
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*petty pundits
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eddy – One reason that Ferguson “changed” coaches at Trafford Park was that his deputy generally found a new job and buggered off – Archie Knox, Kidd, McLaren, Carlos Querioz etc. Bit different to Arsenal I’d say.
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–
Per’s calmness is a result of his incredible understanding of the game? Why would so many forwards bail out of the test when running directly towards Mertesacker with the ball? It’s not because they wouldn’t have the pace to get around him, but because he is simply too good.
Tricky call that one for sure, too tricky for me! I’m off to do my washing and that’s hard enough.
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yes anicol but that does not change the fact that there was a change, and also fergie brought in new guys from outside the club to replace the assistant or coach that left, it was a new voice to the players.
Utd also freshened up the squad with big signings on a regular basis, with this from a position of strength. Combining the two was for me certainly one of the main reasons for their long run of success. As it was with Liverpool back in the 70’s and 80’s.
I would say that the biggest factor is the quality of player added to the squad, and its why I think Wenger will add some top quality this summer and will jettison those he feels have not preformed this season and that this will give the whole squad a lift.
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Team news.
Arsenal unchanged, Wilshere a sub
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I’m sure there will be loads of complaints across arsenal blog world about that team selection, Ramsey, Per and Giroud the likely targets for the boo boys.
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We enter the time machine and travel back to 2003:
“Hello, hello, hi is that Pat Rice? It’s Peter here. No not that Peter. Peter Risdale. The owner, entrepreneur sorry I mean director of Leeds Utd.
R. I. S. D. A. L. E. You might have seen me on the telly? Well, never mind.
I, I was wondering if you’d seen your old pal GG that staunch Arsenal man up at Tottenham (my time travelling could have some glitches here) and also seen what a Sterling job your friend Mr. O’Leary has been doing for us? And I…yes, yes, I am getting to the point…I was wondering if you would…hello? Hello? Pat are you there? why are you muttering in some kind of foreign Gaelic, I can’t understand, hello? Hello? Nope. He’s gone.”
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Abou Diaby starts again for Marseille today – second consecutive game, first time since Feb 2013 he’s started 2 in a row
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The question might be whether AF would have brought in a new coach if the existing man in the job had not moved on ?
I am a bit dubious about the notion of the players getting bored or not longer listening to a manager – perhaps that was Alan Smith’s experience. Players and managers however change, through experience and learning, and the world around them and the challenges they face change them. The notion that Arsene, or Fergie for that matter, would still be coming out with the same dressing room ‘patter’ that they did five or ten years ago seems doubtful to me. In any leadership job your style and content develop, you say different things.
I’d say the biggest behind-the-scenes football change this season was Jose’s spat with the lovely Dr Eva – after which whatever fresh, or stale things, the Portuguese martinet was saying to the CFC players in the dressing room did not get any reaction.
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Eddie Nketiah scored a brace yesterday to go top of the U18 league scorers’ chart with 21 goals. He is the first Arsenal youth player to score more than 20 goals in a season since Benik Afobe.
Oddly enough, despite his great scoring run for the U18’s, Nketiah has not had a look in for the FA Youth cup squad(0 games), or the U19’s(0 games) or U21’s( 0+1 games). His 21 goals have come in 19+8 games for the U18’s
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Thanks Steww. Not long to go now.
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yes anicol the manager will say different things, but players tend to have stopped listening so in part it don’t matter what he says. when its the same people working with the same players, you get more of a friendship and not the boss/management and players divide. Again that is why I say the biggest thing that shakes things up is bringing in players and dumping the ones that are no longer listening or no longer performing, and why I expect Wenger will do that this summer.
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Well if they have stopped listening eddy then the should be out the f***** door I’d say (banned smileeeeeey)
COME ON YOU MIGHTY REDS
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well anicol I’m saying that is what will happen this summer.
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I am expecting a quiet Summer eddy – one or two new faces maybe to replace the definite leavers but Elneny has already sorted the Flamster/Arteta gap – conceivably we may have a bit of a shake up at centre back but I’d say that was 20/80 against
Who knows what the Euros might bring though ??
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my earlier point Ed was that we have continually evolved the squad, there is no major bloodletting, no mass selling of players but a continual motion of renewal much like the famous bootroom years ago.
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COYG
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3 minutes – Iwobi shoots from outside area, just wide.
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Iwobi still looking sharp.
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Great game so far.
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6 minutes – Elneny almost in with a one two with Giroud
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8 minutes – per heads straight at keeper from a corner
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9 minutes – monreal with an awful cross when in lots of space, straight to the keeper
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11 minutes – Monreal cross gathered by the keeper
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Iwobi has been so positive, so quick to move the ball forward. Quite exceptional for one so young.
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13 minutes – Ramsey mistake sees Sunderland get in and its out for a corner
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14 minutes – cattermole close from the corner
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Sunderland creeping back into it.
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20 minutes – Elneny with shot form outside the area, but it lacked power
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