The simple truth is that being a football fan is more about emotion than it is about logic. We want what we want and for most it matters not that what we want is a fantasy. We have a romantic notion of how our club should perform. We all think our club should be “taken to the next level”. This is not an Arsenal thing, you hear fans from most clubs saying the same thing. And when they don’t get this “next level” they blame others for failing to achieve their dreams for them.

It’s the players to blame, or the board, or the hapless manager. It’s never their lack of acceptance of reality or their unrealistic expectations. Oh no, and, as many fans feel the same and think the same, they have a consensus.

People seem prepared to ignore any reality that means that their happiness is unlikely to be realised for them by their club.

Let’s look at some of the things Arsenal fans are happy to dismiss in order for them to justify their demands, and let us consider whether these demands are reasonable or not.

We use history (we are the 3rd most successful team in history) yet ignore the recent history of how the game has changed. History is no more what happened in the thirties than it is what happened yesterday. It’s all history. But there are turning points and we are affected by recent turning points more than we are of ancient ones. And let’s be honest here, if it happened pre-war then in football terms, that’s ancient history, almost prehistoric.

In 1992 the advent of the Premier League changed the landscape. If you don’t believe me, ask any Liverpool fan. Their history had them as default league winners, they haven’t won it even once since and are hurtling farther away with each year and new signing. But they still benefit from that history in that they have a huge domestic and overseas fan base that brings in money through commercial deals. However, as each year passes this fan base will likely grow at a slower rate than their rivals and their historical advantage will diminish, much like that of Villa or Forest. So we can see that the further back in history we look, the less relevant it becomes. That’s why George Graham is more relevant than Herbert Chapman.

In 2003 Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea. Another turning point. A total game changer for teams like Arsenal and Liverpool who were hoping to challenge for honours. Rather than me trying to explain it, here is an article written and researched by a Liverpool fan:

How Chelsea Ruined Football

Read it and weep.

In 2008  Sheikh Mansour bought Manchester City and brought with him the £500 billion sovereign spending power of Abu Dhabi.

Now in simple terms if you accept Manchester United were top dog and in a class of their own on spending power, then these other two bought into the top table. So all the history that Arsenal and Liverpool had was bulldozed out the way by huge wads of cash writing its own history.

The next bit of history that we have to consider is Arsenal’s move to the new stadium, with all the restrictions on team building and maintenance that brought. This subject has been done to death and if someone does not accept that in this period we were miles behind then I am not about to address their stupidity today.

Then recent history works in our favour for a change. Financial Fair Play had some effect and the long term commercial deals we were tied to ran out and we were able to make big strides. The short term loans on the stadium were repaid and we found ourselves more able to compete for top players.

Please note how I said “more able” because no matter that we are better off, if the others are still richer we are still at a disadvantage. All be it less so.

People who say we now have enough money to compete, ignore the fact that, actually, we don’t.

For example, let’s say Real Madrid buy Aguero and that frees up Benzema. First off all there will be an absolute bun fight for his signature and some of those fighting for it will be able to offer more in fees and wages than Arsenal. Now remember that he was sold because he is not Aguero, not Messi or Ronaldo, not Suárez or Neymar, but the level below that. So even if Arsenal got him we have not caught up, not by a long way. And yet people insist we should be competing with the teams that have the real top drawer players. I simply ask “why is that then?”

This is the argument I like best: “We should be better with scouting, fitness and tactics”. 

These people seem to have forgotten that all these avenues for improvement are open to every club, and more open to clubs with more money.

So again I ask: “Why should Arsenal be the club that excels above others in these fields?”

Well I will tell you why. It is because we are unreasonable and illogical.

Recent history has made it very hard to catch, let alone pass three clubs in England. In Europe it’s just the same. Almost every year the richest clubs win the ECL.

It’s not a coincidence you know?

So ask yourselves: Are Arsenal failing to achieve, or are they just failing to achieve your unrealistic expectations?

If your argument is “we should be doing better” I will counter that with the suggestion that perhaps we are where we should be, given the history.

Now, having said all that, I expect us to compete with the very best next year, both domestically and in Europe.

The thing is though, I won’t be squealing and stamping my feet if we don’t and blaming others for not achieving my own personal expectations.

Pedantic George ( aka @Blackburngeorge )

Last night I read again a blog written by @AFC_ChrisGooner “Arsenal putting pieces in place for future success” http://bit.ly/1QpmfXr  .I have read it several times now and it a fabulous piece , well written and researched. Having read it I then tweeted

People didn’t see a plan not because there wasn’t one, but because they were unable to comprehend its enormity. Silly people.”

I expected the usual replies. you know the ones .“We were lied to . we could have done more, we should have done X, we should have bought Y, mistakes were made blah blah blah” . But to my surprise very few like that were forthcoming. So either people now accept they were wrong and the improvements are now so obvious that they can’t deny them or perhaps people are just happy and are prepared to forgive the perceived acts of negligence by the club?

I suppose the problem for many is that their ambitions are tied to the club. They are basically asking someone else to be ambitious on their behalf. The Arsenal board, and by extension Arsene Wenger are responsible for their personal ambition. An odd state of affairs and somewhat unique to football fans who in real life think that tweeting while sitting on the toilet is ambitious.

Still, I digress.Back to last night. I then got a reply that I believe is the single best tweet I have ever seen.

@Blackburngeorge “spend some fucking money!” ringing around the stadium the club spent £400m+ on. You couldn’t make it up.”

Brilliant. I rest my case.

The internet is awash with bloggers pod-casters and tweeters quickly changing tack and realigning themselves behind Arsene.

Gone are the days when someone was brave enough to voice their wholehearted and unequivocal support for the great man. Now you can’t mention his name without someone trying to praise him above and beyond the level of praise you express.

Twitter is full of the few remaining WOBs duking it out with former WOBs.

Most of those that were respectfully asking for Arsene to go have climbed onto the fence and are willing to let him stay (Bloody decent of them, eh?). You can hear them with their “I’m softening towards him” or “I will wait and see if the improvement continues“, some even begrudgingly concede “I might have been harsh on Arsene“.

Those who previously had splinters in their backsides, from sitting on the fence, are shuffling into the “I support the manager” camp and looking for a place to pitch their very portable tents.

Of course there are still some WOBs remaining. These though are looking more and more like Ishmael , clinging to a coffin that is bobbing among the wreckage of their sunken arguments. And why not? What is their alternative? Admitting they were wrong in the most disrespectful and ignorant manner? I think not!

Now this sounds like I am complaining. That it shouldn’t be happening. That I don’t like it or want it. Wrong.  It’s great that more and more fans are appreciating the stellar work of the manager, staff and board are doing. I love it. Climb on board. The more is the merrier.

But let’s be honest here. They are not changing for any other reason than the team is improving and things are being won. They have not been educated to this new level of support. A few bad results will likely see them once again slipping their stilettos into the backs of people who have consistently been transforming the club for years.

People that have seen the light, should be asking themselves why they have been sitting in the dark for so long? There is nothing happening that could not have been foreseen by anyone willing to look.

Players were sold – the reasons were obvious.

Great players were not bought – the reasons were obvious.

We were not winning trophies – the reasons were obvious.

We couldn’t beat the best teams – the reasons were obvious.

The priority was CL qualification – the reasons were………….. you guessed it………….obvious.

Everything the club was working towards was obvious.

They had a plan………………….obvious.

They were smart enough and resolute enough to stick to it………………..obvious.

The plan was way beyond the comprehension of many fans, yes, but that didn’t mean there was no plan.

I always found it ridiculous that the most ambitious club in the country should be labeled by many of its own fans as unambitious.

Even now though we see fans trying to justify their previous stance with claims of “Arsene has changed“.  The alternative is them owning up to being wrong, stupid and uninformed.

Arsene has not changed. All that has changed is his credit limit. His philosophies have not changed one little bit. What has changed is the standard of the players he now has to put them into practice.

People begrudgingly admit the plan is working, while still thinking that they had a plan that would have worked better and quicker.

Unlike the doubters and disbelievers, there were some people, a precious few to be fair, who for years predicted exactly what is happening right now. Not because they are seers and prophets, but because they understood the plan was sensible and it was being implemented by experts, not the least of which is Arsene Wenger.

So, if you are someone who is either overtly or covertly changing you position, please just hold your hand up and accept you seem to have been wrong, rather than trying to justify your previous stance. Because, as they say Ignorance is no defense.

A guest post from @foreverheady

Just for a moment I want to imagine what it must feel like to be Morgan Schneiderlin. Or rather, to imagine how he views his career and its likely progression. I should think he feels pretty good about things: another great season at Southampton, on the fringes of his national team and ready now to make a career defining move. A move that is perhaps the most important one he will ever make. Certainly the dogs are barking his name, and he is seen as the perfect fit for any one of a number of clubs, with Manchester United and Arsenal the most obviously touted by those who profess to know about these things. Premier league tried and tested, it is surely only a matter of time before he is seduced by the kind of fame and fortune that only the very top clubs can offer and virtually guarantee.

Except of course there are no guarantees in top level sport, and especially not in the cut-throat world of football.When Schneiderlin considers his options he will need to think about wages and length and terms of contract, and he must also think about the type of club he wants to represent. He must feel he can trust the manager, and that he will develop and grow under his tutelage. But above all he must feel absolutely certain that he will be a star at the club, and that he will pretty much be the first name on the team sheet. And that of course is the problem for players like him, because he wouldn’t necessarily be sure that he would be automatic first choice for any of the top four clubs. Make no mistake, he is a very fine player, but is he that much better than the options those clubs already have? James Milner is a prime example of this: he was an outstanding servant to Manchester City, but he knew that he wasn’t that high on the pecking order, and was likely to be displaced if any of the much-touted galactico signings take place as promised and as seem likely, given the apparent relaxation of FFP. Fed up with forever playing the Swiss Army Knife role Milner wanted to be a real star at his next club, and his move to Liverpool makes perfect sense. He will likely become a crowd favourite, and it is easy to imagine him really thriving: the move ticks all the boxes. But if Milner had wanted to play at United, or Chelsea, or the Arsenal, he would have faced pretty much the same situation as he did at City. It looks to me as if Schneiderlin is in a similar positon, and that is why I suspect he would not want to sign for The Arsenal, however much fans and pundits suggest he should.

Please understand, I am not suggesting that he is not good enough for The Arsenal, for his regular performances over the last couple of years suggest he would fit in easily at The Emirates. He would, I suspect, be very good indeed. But would he be good enough to command a regular starting role? Would he automatically push Coquelin out of the starting line-up, or Jack Wilshere, or Aaron Ramsey? I am not so sure he would, and I expect he is not that certain either. He would have looked at the starting XI in the Cup Final, and looked at the bench, and he would have come to his own conclusions. Does he really want to leave Southampton to become a squad player at the highest level, or does he want to wait until he can find a Milner type solution, the type of solution he has already found at Southampton. Much will depend on money, of course, but much will also depend on the extent of his playing ambitions, and how much he needs to be playing each week. Very good players demand huge wages if they know they are only going to be part of a squad and not the main man.

And that of course is the problem that faces The Arsenal as they attempt to make the most difficult step forward of all, the step from good to great. The club already has a very good squad, and doesn’t need to be adding costly extra players just to provide even more depth. It perhaps does need to add a player or two who would be better that what it already has. But they are few and far between, and they are highly prized and they tend to be even more highly priced. We have seen the difference that first Ozil and then Alexis made to the team, and I have no doubt that Arsene Wenger is keenly aware that another such signing would be very nice indeed; I suspect he is most actively pursuing a couple of players but he will be doing so discreetly and with customary stealth. He is unlikely to buy anyone for the sake of buying someone, and I would suggest he will not pay £25m for a Schneiderlin when he already has a Coquelin, unless he feels that he would actually be an upgrade, in which case he will already be actively persuading young Morgan, as one Strasbourgian to another, that he is top, top quality.

We will see and I find this summer a fascinating one. We have a great squad, and we have some amazing players. Should we have any luck at all with injuries we will be competitive next season whether we sign anyone or not, and that is a great –and also an unusual- situation to be in. It is the sort of situation that only arises though astonishing wealth, or luck, or meticulous and inspired planning. But I cannot believe for one moment that the club is satisfied to just be here, nor that it is as unambitious and limited as those who merely parrot the populist cry for a new spine, whatever that actually means in a dynamic and fluid game. The next moves will be exciting ones, and I suspect they will also be surprising, given that money for the highest quality is now very much there, as is the magnetic appeal of the likes of Ramsey, Ozil and Alexis.

How often do we see Arsenal dominate a game, play the best football and not win? Too often, I hear you say.

Why does it happen, or appear to happen, more often to us than others? When it happens we hear the same old rhetoric and soundbites ” same old same old” or ” Tactical naivety ” or some other such crap.

So today I want to offer some ideas as to why this is, or at least why I think it might be.

What tends to happen is that we play the better football, dominate the play , don’t score (or don’t score enough) from the many chances we make, then the opposition either manage to get a fluky goal, we make a silly mistake or on the odd occasion they score a screamer.

Before this can come about something has to happen, we have to be the better team. And we are, on almost every occasion. We lost two games at home this year, MUFC and Swansea. We were all over both teams . Three or four nil at half time would not have been an unfair reflection of both of those games. But we weren’t. Somehow, through a combination of resolute defending and /or, poor finishing they managed to take it to the point where a late goal grabbed them the points. In the case of MUFC it took the referee missing a foul , where Marouane Fellaini pushed Gibbs (who was in mid-air at the time) into Szczesny , causing them both to hit the deck. Then a lucky deflection off Gibbs (while still on the floor following the assault) and that was that. Swansea ? I mean it was all one way trafffic and a catalogue of individual errors saw a weak header sneak over the line, just……. But make no mistake , we battered both teams.

But it keeps happening ! I hear you.

Well yes. And it will as long as we keep playing better football than the rest,  they will set up to frustrate, they will commit rotational fouls, they will hope to ride their luck, they will sometimes score goals against the run of play, they will occasionally get away with it and win. Because they have little choice, Arsenal play better football. They are maximising their chances of winning. Why would they not?

In the vast majority of occasions though, it won’t succeed and doesn’t work. We still win. Its nothing new or clever, most teams do it. Not only do they do it when we are at home, but most of them do it when they are at home. The sad reality is that sometimes it works for them.

It happens to us more that it happens to other teams because we have to play against it more often than other teams. Even Chelsea set up like that home and away against us.

Now I’m not talking about the times we play poorly, Stoke away first half, the big reverses at Chelsea, Everton and Liverpool last season. On those occasions they attacked us and we were found wanting for one reason or another. No, I’m talking about the vast majority of games where we face teams that have accepted we play better football and they don’t want a game. I don’t blame them either, what else can they do? But also, what else can we do?

We want to dominate?  Right !  We want to play better football than them ?   Right ! We want to create chances?  Right!!

Well sometimes we do all of these things and don’t score. Sometimes we can play the same way, to the same level and win easily. But once in a while we either won’t win, or even (very occasionally) lose. My contention is that it happens more to us because the circumstances are repeated more often.

I watched West Brom have 20% possession at United, ride their luck and win. I saw Barca, against Celtic, have 89% possession, about 45 attempts on goal and lose to a single goal, from a corner, Celtic’s only attempt on goal. It happens a lot. But it only hurts when it happens to us.

Monaco was the perfect example of this. Revisionist thinking has us playing awful and getting spanked. But it took a combination of the worst finishing we have seen in years, from normally efficient scorers, and Per flicking a speculative nothing of a shot, into the top corner before the madness at the end of the game. Yes we made some utterly daft plays, but the set up and tactics had created enough chances for us to be out of sight .

Now just imagine that Theo hit the defender in front of him rather that the little gap between that defender and the post, then Alexis hit the bar full on rather than the underside, despite playing one of the best games we have seen, we would have been one stroke of luck on Villa’s part away from a nightmare and cries of tactical incompetence and we never learn.

I am not ignoring that on occasions we seem to go into melt down. I’m not saying we have bad luck. I’m not saying that we can’t cut down on how often it happens. I’m just saying it happens to us more because we face teams accepting it must be a backs to the wall war of attrition before a ball is kicked.

So that is where we are, and the obstacles we face in converting quality and footballing dominance into three points every week. Is there a solution though – the magic bullet ?

Pedantic George ( AKA @Blackburngeorge )

Guest Post by @shotta_gooner

Before I go into anything today, please understand that this article is not a defence of Arsene Wenger. It has nothing to do with him, nothing ! OK?

I am going to lay out, in the most simple of terms, why Arsenal should not be expected to win the PL and ECL, and using very basic figures and analogies.

First off, no one is yet to give me one logical reason why the fourth richest club in England should be beating the three that are, even now, considerably richer.

There have been studies done that show an 85% direct correlation between spend and success, across all major leagues. This isn’t my opinion, it is fact. It may be a sad fact and one we wish didn’t exist, but a fact it is and being a fact, we have to acknowledge it and until it changes, accept it. In simple terms that leaves you a 15% chance of beating the odds. So yes, it can be done. Again I ask though, not why Arsenal ‘could’ be the team to do it, but why they ‘should’ be the club to do it?

People will point to Atlético Madrid as an example of how it can be done. Yes, but they are the 3rd biggest club in Spain and have done it once in 20 years. That is 5% of the time and within the previously mentioned 15% window.However that simply proves the maths, it does not mean they (or anyone else) should be expected to do it. Just that its possible. No one is saying its impossible.

But what about MUFC this year ? They had the most expensive squad and the highest wages, and we finished above them, I hear people say. Again, this is true, but lets consider why. They have had to pay massively inflated transfer fees and wages to attract players. So their wages are not actually a true reflection of the worth of their players. Lets say £250 k pw each for Falcao and RVP. That distorts things considerably. However, as a rule, given half decent management, the wages are a reflection of quality. MCFC came into huge funds and wanted to join the party. In order to attract better players they had to massively over pay, in terms of fees and wages, in order to attract better players like Ade (coughs). So for that period the spend was not a true reflection of quality. And yet once they were in the ECL they bought truly top class players, their spend became a reflection of quality and they won the title, twice.

Chelsea in the early days went on the biggest spending spree (in real terms) that football has ever seen. Their spend became a reflection of their quality and they won the league twice. Then they stopped spending at those levels , the team got older and the wages were no longer a real reflection. What happened is they came 5th. What happens next?  Yes, they went on another spending spree and they won it again. That they finished above MUFC and MCFC with a slightly lower wage bill is because of where they are in the buying cycle. City are heading towards the point where Chelsea were before the second spending spree. Make no mistake, another spree is coming.

The ECL is even more of a challenge. Not only do we have to try and overcome the odds against the three  other richer English clubs, but there is Barca, Real, Bayern and PSG. Its no coincidence that in Europe the winners are also the biggest spending clubs.

That’s the bad news. The good news is the 15%. That means winning is a possibility.We should be doing everything we can to get nearer the spending of these clubs and exploit the advantages Arsenal have. Like stability and a long term plan. We should hope to overcome the odds. But when hope and desire become expectations and demands that is when logic flies out the window. That is when we become unreasonable entitled halfwits.

We have to accept the reality of the new football world. Despite the additional income from the stadium,we are not one of the elite clubs. We are getting there, but as of yet we are the level below. Since the move was planned Oil money and revenue from TV and commercial deals have reduced the advantage we could have expected when the plan was hatched. Its sad for Arsenal , but the fact is the landscape has changed. What we were doing in the early part of the century is as irrelevant  as what Liverpool were doing in the eighties. But just imagine where we would have been without the move?

We have to hope that Arsene and the club can and do find a way to overcome the odds (and I do) but it will be against the  odds. If we do it , it will be an incredible achievement. Its not something we should expect or demand.

Tomorrow I might write a blog on why I believe we will challenge and the reasons I believe we can, but it would be from a position of understanding the difficulties and accepting the realities. If I back a ten to one shot in a race, I do so because I hope and think it can win, but I understand that its ten to one for a reason. I won’t call the jockey and the trainer useless if it doesn’t come in.