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 3rd 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 31st:
“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.
Positively Arsenal 
People are not stupid, people are people and your one to
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Beautifully articulated Mo. A cultured and well reasoned response to Shotta’s article.
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Lol , Absolutely brilliant my dear old friend.
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And indeed it is an excellent post Shotta.
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The Daily Mail, just like blogger #3, never fail!
And its so true what you say about stupidity being in all social standings and even in the highest office in many countries. I know a few individuals with doctorates that are just totally stupid when it comes to Arsenal. They confuse stupidity with “passion”.
Last week on twitter another stupid suggest that Arsenal should offer shares to some of the super agents. These idiots are many and are too eager to pollute the Arse-sphere.
Stupidity is an ugly condition, if left unchecked.
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‘The Sun is more than a newspaper. It is an instigator, an entertainer, a cultural reference point, a finger on the pulse, a daily relationship. Read by more than ten million readers in the UK every week, the country reaches for The Sun when they need to discover, debate, understand, decide, laugh, cry, act or fight. Key columnists include Trevor Kavanagh, Ally Ross, Jane Moore, Rod Liddle, Jeremy Clarkson, Lorraine Kelly, Dan Wooton, Tony Parsons and Louise Mensch.’
Yep
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People are generally not stupid, it is the things they do that tend to be stupid. 🙂
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The Sun is only used as a firelighter in my house as my Mother in Law gives her used ones to me. The levels of rubbish I notice as I’m scrunching it up for burning is mind boggling.
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Nice one man.
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NICE ONE.
STUPIDITY CAN BECOME CONTAGIOUS IF ALLOWED TO THRIVE.
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Stupid is highly contagious as well so it’s wise to limit your exposure!
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brilliant article Shotta, and your point is drilled home by the first response, you see Stupid people don’t like being told they are stupid, its not considered PC to tell them they are stupid either.
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Very well written. There is a well know blog, written by a certain marketing man with the initials PW, which is home to many of those so described. These people have been successfully converted into babbling morons by the MSM & lazy pundits.
Hard as it may be to believe but there are people on there who cheer opposition goals. Most of them refuse to accept the 3 FA Cup wins in 4 years as success, despite demanding trophies in the most abusive terms. There are several so called fans who claim they still have not watched the Cup Final….! What is interesting is that those most anti-FA Cup trophies are also the most vocal about their anti-Wenger stance being about, you guessed it, wanting trophies. Now I don’t know the science about stupidity but I certainly know where to go to find one of these stupid people.
They can usually be found nodding in agreement with media baiters like Adrian Durham, Neil Ashton, Piers Morgan, Stewart Robson or number 1 Chelsea fan Paul Merson (apologies to those I missed out) or typing 4 letter words into social media. I don’t know the science behind it but I do know somewhere along the line, we have created a sub species. Just wish they would take their ‘support’ somewhere else. Try Spurs, they’ve been waiting 56 years for a title now that’s got to be worth a few expletives, hasn’t it?
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Arsenal play Doncaster next week in the CC, a competition we set the lowest ticket prices for, yet the “whole generation of fans being priced out of the game” are so far unwilling to buy the tickets for it. maybe its time we stopped accepting stupid soundbites like the one above, and call out the stupid people who use it to attack the club with.
“Whole generation of fans who are priced out of going to the biggest games of the season, and can’t be arsed to go to the lesser games of the club they claim to love and support despite £10 ticket prices”
don’t have the same ring to it
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I blame Stan
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Trabzonspor manager Muharrem Usta says he held talks with Jack Wilsere over a season long loan move but the move stalled at the last moment.
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Arsenal had first team squad photo taken today, Nelson, Willock, Macey and Nketiah were in included in the squad
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As my father used to say:
beware the stupid and cowardly….
Nice piece Shotta, no holds barred as usual.
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Some things never change. Bad news always sold newspapers and these days creates clicks. Empty vessels (empty that is of logic) create the most noise. People have always painted themselves into opinion related corners and the more they do it in public the more it becomes dogmatic belief despite logical arguments to the contrary. Once stated in public it becomes too difficult to back down. Losing face is worse than being right.
Arsenal suffer most because there more club related websites fighting for attention than for anyone else. Thank goodness for the likes of P.A. Keep it up.
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Cazorla missed today’s photo shoot due to a follow-up appointment in Spain
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BOOM Shotta
What we have witnessed at the start of this season is frenzy of stupidity fed by the click baiters and footballing genius’ from a land that can’t even beat the mighty Iceland in a game of football: it’s ludicrous and funny too.
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Dat guy Welbz though.
Missed the match but from all accounts he’s getting back to the levels we saw when he scored that CL hat trick.
That knee knack may niggle and restrict him to one game a week on average but with Alexis on the bench it’s all good as they say on Shotta’s side of the pond.
As with Cazorla the home crowd took to him from the start. Shotts don’t you think that the recent and spectacular misreadings of political polls both here and stateside reflect that the internet or social media to be exact can be an echoes chamber of or for stupidity?
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Something like Douglas Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex?
You can spend so long staring at the single screen with one vanishing point that if you’re not careful you’ll dissapear up your own Arsenal?
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My family and I survived Irma. Thank God.
Very well written, Shotta.
“Stupid is as stupid does”
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Good evening Shotta and I enjoy your review of content from bloggers none of whom I am pleased to admit I ever read. Fair play to you for delving in the garden of sour misery and self indulgence that the Galaxy Arse consists of. You have a stronger stomach than me.
I suspect the notion of bloggers as opinion formers or even sources of additional information or original opinion is bogus. Every fan has to make his or her mind up, follow their star as a supporter wherever it leads.
Who cares what someone else thinks ?
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Thanks for your generally kind comments in. As I sit and watch today’s group stages matches of the champions league, seeing the famous Juventus get trashed by our old nemesis Barcelona, I am reminded of that incredibly stupid idea by our top bloggers that it would be good if Arsenal fell out of the champions league places. Apart from the money lost to the club, just imagine those players who gave us the brush off based on the absence of champions league football. Not to mention the hundreds and thousands who gobbled up the nonsense and let it affect their behavior towards the club. As Cipolla postulated a stupid person a the most dangerous person indeed.
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but shotta by going out of the CL it means Arsenal spend spend spend to get back in, just look at the 100’s if £M we spent this summer,
what you mean we are in transfer profit, but but but they said….
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AndyNic: Trust me most of us very familiar with Blogger #1 and #2, whether past or present.
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Shotta was blogger C followed by blogger ,U, N and T? I think I’ve read their work.
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Yes George. Blogger C is the UNT who is wildly infatuated with his “opinion”.
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I get George by the way. Just went off on my own. Lol.
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Pul n… So glad U guys are okay.. continue to stay safe s the days after are often also risky
Shotta well done for taking those bloggers on.. so many put in so much effort to write rubbish.. one really does wonder.
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Paul N… So glad U guys are okay.. continue to stay safe s the days after are often also risky
Shotta well done for taking those bloggers on.. so many put in so much effort to write rubbish.. one really does wonder.
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But Dear Deidre tho!
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Shotts,
What a wonderful article this is!! Basically defines most of Arsenal tweeter; with a few very notable exceptions.
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“Lord, what fools these mortals be” -Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Bravo!😂😂😂😂🙌🙌
A sweet but thoughtful read.👊👊👊
Wenger, ‘a man more sinned against than sinning’.
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The same Bloggers who said we were better off out of the CL we won’t win, now complain they miss it – blaming Wenger.
Alas! I miss the good days we burned witches, sorry I meant stupid people.😉😉😉
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Thanks Shotta, good stuff.
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A half strength Chelsea put 6 past Quaraberg last night, the visiting team only turned up to get their cheque.
There were far too many utterly one sided games last night, the CL format is getting a tad worn
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“Alas! I miss the good days we burned witches, sorry I meant stupid people.😉😉😉”
Fucking hell, how old are you? By the way, we burn people who use 😉😉😉 on here.
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I’m excited by this squad
But worried about it’s shortcomings in deep midfield
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Shotts
Re: Welbeck. I do think that Giroud is unlucky here in the minutes he’s got this season so far, but without playing how would anyone ever know where Welbeck is at? I guess the season is long and the sooner Danny reaches the top fitness leves the better it is for the squad/team, in the meantime Giroud won’t be at risk of playing whilst fatigued as we’ve seen in his earlier time at AFC. Same applies to Sanchez, now it’s his last season AW won’t leave him onwhenhe is cream crackered? It’s all coming together…hah!
It is remarkable how amongst the feeding frenzy the one valid critique that could have been made this season of tactics* and the football, that of not starting Giroud away at Stoke, has been completely bypassed by the c****g idiots pardon me. It’s so blinkin’ weird! Nevermind the Football…
*the desire to keep AOC as evidenced by his start in the cup final was clear. And true to AW’s form all the way back to the CL final and beyond, so if anyone has a problem with that they might as well headbutt a brick wall till they’re left with nothing with a bleeding stump because that ain’t going to change for the next two seasons at least. Hehe. And as you know I’d have it no other way!
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WWB
Is Saint Jacky is going to ride to the rescue whilst slaying the Dragon of Gent*, whilst not scoring an own goal to send his own team crashing out?
*the Europa league will help him get back up to speed and in the process we’ll see a footballer who can play football better then some of the hyped up diving cloggers from up the road.
I’m looking forward to the football tomorrow.
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> tomorrow will show us how the midfield reserves are looking.
One of the most fluid midfield three we saw last season albeit against lower league opponents was:
AOC*
AMN & The Jeff (I think),
Think it was in an early FA cup game. Again, not sure, but I remember enjoying what I saw from them.
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Final thought for the day:
Is the three at the back set up similar to the German national set up only in so much as it pushes Özil up in to a front three? Very vaguely, something like that?
By focusing on the wrong end of the pitch have all the experts, plundits and fragrant arseblaggers completely missed out on why AW is enjoying this tweak?
I have no idea myself.
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ox on bench again. soon he understand we indulge him far too long here. he will struggle to get a place in their wing let alone the central midfield. all those who thought he ddnt develop very well under wenger will soon see how he’ll develop under klopp.
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I’m going to is the strange and consistent yet enlightening spectacle of hearing English broadcasters and plundits support non-English clubs against the most English of English football clubs.
It’s been educational!
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> the old stiff upper mixed in with some working class heros and plucky oirish men! we are talking the full Monty here (my comment above on “Englishness” was nothing to do with ownership though I’m sure Dickens too would approve of the club that wasn’t owned by an oligarch, just like dear old Jezza really…)
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< Scots too! Not forgetting 'bama's favourite Welsh rarebit.
By far the greatest club the world has ever seen.
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