So two weeks after an embarrassing loss to Liverpool, Arsenal has a complete turnaround vs Bournemouth, demolishing them  3:0, toying with the Cherries for long periods. You would expect from mainstream media and Arsenal bloggers-tweeters-podcasters unreserved appreciation for the manager and the team for putting the ignominy of Liverpool behind them. After all prior to the game, they were universal in stressing the importance of this fixture:

Blogger #1:

It’s clear what we need to do: win. 

Blogger #2:

The reality is that today is a match we’re expected to win. Bournemouth, just two places below us, are sacrificial lambs, even though I’d expect them to be obdurate. Not agriculturally like a Pulis or Allardyce side but well-organised as they have been since joining the top flight.

Blogger #3:

Didn’t even do a pre-game review spending the days prior to in an orgy of self-congratulatory pieces stressing the importance of his opinion.

Not surprisingly, like Charlie Brown in the long running comic strip Peanuts, the manager and the players must have felt perplexed with little gratitude shown  for matching or exceeding expectations set for them by those so-called supporters.

Blogger #1:

The players will know that it was bread and butter stuff though. If this was getting back on the horse after falling off at Anfield, it was a Shetland Pony.

Blogger #2:

It was half-decent preparation for next weekend’s trip to Chelsea but let’s not go overboard in proclaiming we’re on the rise again. That was one good performance in a match we were expected to win.

Blogger #3:

Don’t get me wrong, it was a lovely performance, but the big test is at Chelsea next week. For all the fun of our game today, it has to be said, Bournemouth were appalling.

The mainstream media were just as reluctant to shell out any praises.

ESPN:

The Gunners had lost to both Stoke and Liverpool heading into the international break but they were never in trouble here as Welbeck inspired them to a 3-0 win against a poor Cherries side.

BBC:

The home fans needed a performance and were treated to a clinical one as the Gunners cruised against a poor Bournemouth side.

Daily Mail:

At the moment Arsenal feel like one bad result away from chaos every match.

Now most of my readers would immediately dismiss this as the usual anti-Arsene, anti-Arsenal whingeing by mainstream and social media, trying as usual to make light of any Arsenal success. My aim in today’s blog is to argue there is more at play at here. What we are witnessing is a demonstration of stupidity as outlined by professor Carlo Cipolla, an Italian economist who while at the University Of California, Berkley identified The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.

Before I progress, let me first get this out of the way; not all Arsenal fans are stupid. But, to be sure, there are a lot of stupid fans who “support” Arsenal Football Club.

In Cipolla’s analysis stupid people are seen as a group, more powerful by far than major organizations such as the Mafia and the military industrial complex, which without regulations, leaders or manifesto nonetheless manages to operate to great effect and with incredible coordination.

Are there any groups more uncoordinated than mainstream football journalists, pundits, Arsenal bloggers-podcasters-tweeters-and supporters group, many of whom claim to support Arsenal and who function at complete distance from each other but are completely united by the most outrageously stupid ideas?

Every quotation above is uniform in discounting how important it was to not only win, but win so comprehensively. Despite their diversity these groups act in total conformity with Cipolla’s model, i.e. they are uniform in their stupidity.

Contrast this with the very experienced Petr Cech who expressed in his post game presser, that this was an enormous result:

‘I’m happy with the response but I hope it’s the last time we have to do that because I hope from now on we actually play at this level in every game because in this league if you are a fraction off the level then you can get easily beaten like we were at Liverpool.’ 

Clearly the result was inconsistent with social and mainstream media’s ad nauseam dooming and gloom for the past 8-9 years and predictions of Wenger’s imminent Waterloo, which as Mark Twain would have observed is more than premature. So they continue to make stupid statements and promote stupid behavior which is clearly inimical to the success for the club they claim to desire.

They give truth to Cipolla’s five fundamental laws of stupidity:

• Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

Some may argue the number of stupid Arsenal supporters are not that many based on the failure of the extremists to mount a decent-sized crowd in any of their demonstrations which up to now, at best, have seen a few score with bedsheets and A-4 paper. But if one notes the hundreds of thousands who support certain bloggers via Facebook and twitter showing their apparent sympathy for their consistently stupid point of view then Cipolla’s thesis runs true.

• The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

Most of these journos, pundits, Arsenal-bloggers, tweeters and podcasters are eminently “handshakeable” people. Some are from the professions, many have advanced degrees and diplomas from eminent institutions and others are self-made. Yet many are singularly united in their stupidity, at least when it comes to the football club.

• A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

You have to wonder what these bloggers, podcaster and tweeters gain in doing everything to damage their club despite it being the 3^rd most successful in the Premier League over the past 21 years while being massively outspent by three other clubs, two of whom enjoy almost limitless sources of external funding. You would think they have more to gain commercially and reputation-wise if the club overcomes the odds to win the PL. Even then 3 FA cups out of the last 4 would be something to brag about and a base for further success.

• Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

When we closed the door to all and sundry at Positively Arsenal it was based on our experience of how stupid people can easily takeover a blog so long as the blogger is willing to deal and/or associate with stupid people. I would argue that Cipolla’s law completely vindicates our decision.

Cipolla concluded: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

Consider for a moment if the Arsenal board, particularly the owner had given in to the uniform stupidity of the mainstream media and Arsenal’s uber bloggers-tweeters-podcasters. If the owner had given in to stupid people inside and outside the directorate, the club could have easily lost its most important asset of the past 21 years. Apparently it was touch and go right down to that fateful meeting last May between Kroenke and Wenger. Now we know Arsenal’s loss would have been PSG’s gain and Real Madrid’s before that and Bayern Munich at some point, all of them willing to snap up Wenger before the ink was dry on his goodbye letter.

Yet we have an eminent blogger declaring that as of August 31^st:

“The current ‘team’, consisting of Wenger, Gazidis and Dick Law, is not big enough, decisive enough, or well-connected enough to cope with the modern transfer market.”

Well f*ck my old boots. Over 100 years combined experience at the top-top level, having outsmarted every greedy agent, selling club and 3rd party owner on the planet has been reduced to one outrageous sentence. Isn’t this the definition why stupid people are so dangerous?

This is the level of low denominator stupidity that our various media set itself as it guarantees revenue via buying of newspapers, clicks online and viewership on tv.  But don’t expect them to publicize Cipolla’s findings even though they have been around since 1956. Should his laws gain currency all of them would be out of business sooner or later.