A guest post from @foreverheady

Serendipity. Just about my favourite word, meaning, as it does, a happy accident or a chance discovery. It was serendipity that led me to The Arsenal back in 1997. I am aware as I write this that it disqualifies me from ever being regarded as a proper fan, although I shan’t lose too much sleep about that. My first team was Portsmouth, being the closest side geographically to where I grew up, and I followed them with the enthusiasm that only a boy can manage. My parents were kind, taking me to a few matches, including one memorable birthday treat, a midweek match under lights against Hull that led to a resounding 4-0 home defeat. I still recall the smarting embarrassment of explaining to the two carefully chosen friends I was allowed to take that we were normally much better than that, though of course in my heart of hearts I knew that that was about our level. I suppose enduring an away League Cup defeat to South Coast rivals, Brighton and Hove Albion, then a whole division beneath Pompey, had already taught me not to rely too heavily on sporting idols. We went posh in the stands then, but my true ambition was always to be behind the goal at the Fratton End. John Milkins was my brilcreemed hero, and I remember every detail of his pre-match routine when I finally strutted my stuff on the terraces: it is hard to imagine Szczesny removing his false teeth and placing them with loving care in the little bag that held cap and gloves before acknowledging his fans with gap-toothed grin, but no doubt whatever he does will be etched firmly in the memory of today’s urchins.

In my late teens I moved along the coast to Brighton, and unforgivably they began to supplant Pompey in my affections, largely because I was able to go and see them fairly regularly. Some of my friends got to know a couple of the players and they would leave tickets on the gate for us. It was my first real experience of supporting a successful team, and my memory is of seeing them go from Third to First Division in successive seasons, mainly due to the trickery of Peter Ward: exciting times, and it was down to The Seagulls that I first went to Highbury, for the FA Cup semi-final against Sheffield Wednesday, a thirty yard screamer from dead-ball specialist Jimmy Case seeing Brighton to Wembley for the first, and perhaps only, time. I drifted away a bit after that, leaving my old life behind.  I moved close to Reading and a new career took over, while football itself lost much of its glamour: Heysel, Hillsborough and England’s reputation for thuggery didn’t do much for its image, and if I remember rightly the BBC even dropped Match of the Day. There didn’t seem much incentive to stay in touch, and the highs and lows of the Turf began to take the place of Football, especially as for geographical reasons I no longer really had a team to support and there wasn’t much to watch on TV in the late 80s and early 90s.

But in February 1997, Jim, a good mate and diehard Palace fan, was keen to go and watch the Fifth Round Cup-tie with another friend, subsequently Best Man at my wedding, who followed The Arsenal. I tagged along and high up in the Clock End saw possibly the worst and most boring game I had ever seen. 0-0 but terrible though it was it was good to be back at the football and I realised how much I had missed it all. As luck would have it the replay was on the TV the following week, and I began to recognise some of the players. They still weren’t desperately convincing, although they won the tie, and points adrift in the League and surely destined to progress not much further in the cup, they seemed a reasonable side to pledge my allegiance to. My father had supported The Arsenal, my best friend did and it seemed appropriate for me to do so. I wanted to be able to say I had a team again, and could surely never be accused of glory hunting for siding with such a seemingly dull side managed by such a strange and owlish man. That the league form immediately turned round, that they chased down United and went on to win the Double was the stuff of fantasy: the tenner on Overmars to score the first goal at Wembley the icing on a rich and unexpected cake. In hindsight it wasn’t a bad time to start following The Arsenal. Serendipity indeed.

But despite the astonishing success that followed on from that great season, I couldn’t really claim to be a proper fan. I looked for the results of course, enjoyed the highlights on TV, basked in the vicarious glow of the side’s success, but I wasn’t with them all the way. There was too much of my own career still to do to spend any time worrying about the careers of strangers, too much of my own life to live to need to live through the life of others. And – and this makes me feel uncomfortable for what it reveals about me – there was also a slight discomfort about supporting such an invincible team, for what is the point of following a side if they are never going to lose? In my formative years I’d regularly been let down by Harry Harris, Ray Pointer, Nicky Jennings: what right had I to go through a season unbeaten? I might as well have been a United or Liverpool fan, a plastic twat in the eyes of many, and maybe myself too.

And that is how it stayed for a good while, through the good seasons, through the move from Highbury, through the disappointments, which while not massive on a global scale, were, none the less, disappointing. I enjoyed supporting The Arsenal, but it was all fairly lukewarm until my boy Daniel started to take an interest four seasons ago, and that – well, that changed everything. Although we didn’t know it at the time it was van Persie’s last season, and he was Daniel’s first hero. I didn’t know how to break it to him that he was leaving, and I didn’t expect him to stay loyal, but despite constant bullying from a United fan, he remained committed to the cause, and suddenly for me there was a real point to supporting the club. Posters went up on bedroom walls, kits were bought, the first family trip to The Emirates arranged. And perhaps crucially for me there was a vulnerability about the team that made supporting them all the more important. Of course they lost to Bradford, of course they got knocked out by Blackburn, of course the new signings took time to settle in – but these reversals made the triumphs all the more worthwhile, and when the team clicked and played the kind of football that only a Wenger team can play, then I really knew I was following by far the greatest team the world had ever seen. Like many dads who have bought their child a trainset too early, The Arsenal took me over completely. I discovered football websites and the whole paraphernalia of social media, and gradually began to find like-minded souls from around the world with whom I could share my hopes and fears. I also began to discover bias, treachery, propaganda and disinformation, which at first dismayed but then, far from annoying me, merely fuelled what was by now becoming a full blown obsession. I began to feel personally responsible for my team.

It would be ridiculous to say that The Arsenal has taken over my life, for there is far too much going on for that to be the case. Both of my children have their own sport to play, and I get to spend plenty of time ferrying them from this pitch to that one. If Netball tournaments get arranged for Cup-final day, then Netball takes priority, if midweek matches coincide with cricket nets, then the cricket comes first. It has to be like that. My job gets irritatingly in the way, and my wife’s career also takes some juggling, so all in all I ought to be able to say that I am not totally dependent on The Arsenal to give meaning to my days. Nevertheless, there are few moments where I am not agonising over the latest result or looking forward to the next match with that familiar and awful mixture of hope and fear. I would love to be able to go to more matches, and maybe in a few years’ time that will be easier to do, but for now I feel fortunate to be able to watch so many games on the TV, to read and write so much about the club, and to have met, either virtually or in real-life, so many wonderful fellow travellers on the Sunshine Bus. To some I may not be a proper fan, but in my heart of hearts I know that very few care as much about The Arsenal as I do. That it took a nil-all home draw to put me on the right track merely confirms that the condition is now probably terminal.

Arsenal won a great game of football yesterday.

Of course if you read twitter this might come as a shock to you. Apparently they didn’t do it with the assurance and panache that many uber fans demand. Clearly we should dominate the game from start to finish and not let the opponents have a kick of the ball in their own back yard.

The total lack of understanding that these halfwits on twitter display is a never ending frustration to me.

In the first half we were dominant and created many opportunities, scoring twice without reply. We were not at our scintillating best, for sure, but would you expect that ? It was our fourth game in 14 days and our 3rd away game in that period. And  we won them all.

The game changed early in the second half when the hosts scored a goal with the help of some good play on their part and some sloppy play on ours.

What happens in these circumstances is the home crowd go berserk, the home team find an extra yard and start playing with freedom and flair. Why? Because that is how it works. They would have felt the game was lost, All of a sudden they are back in it. Tails are up, caution thrown to the wind. They are the home team after all. They are entitled to have a go .

The problem yesterday was that we were unable to take back control. The tanks were empty. So………. we had to hang on and defend.

Its almost like Arsenal are the only team that are not credited for being resolute in defence.Other teams win while not at their best and are hailed as great teams. Arsenal do it and its the players being crap and the manager being unable to motivate them. Double standards much !

I watched that game. What I saw was a home team putting in a fantastic performance in the second half against a very leggy opponent.

Its was a great 3 points and under the circumstances, a good performance.

I

A guest post from Yido6061

When the footage of Chelsea fans boasting of their racist entitlement whilst jostling a black man on the Paris Metro emerged a couple of weeks ago, I admittedly fell into the trap set by my own deeply entrenched prejudices. After all, this is the club that continues to be captained by a self-styled ‘leader’ and ‘legend’ who was undeniably caught on camera spitting out equally abhorrent racial slurs towards a fellow professional.

This is the fanbase of a club who have evoked the horrors of the Nazi gas chambers by insidiously hissing at my own club’s supporters over the years. This is the club who cannot observe the poignancy required by a minute’s quiet reflection on the anniversary of ninety-six deaths during a cup semi-final. that’s the problem with prejudice. It is an emotion bereft of reason and when one realises it has taken hold, one must immediately banish it to some dark recess of the brain, sub-categorised ‘The Seventies’. Of course not all Chelsea fans are knuckle-dragging, unevolved goons, posturing and chest-beating themselves into xenophobic frenzy on French public transport.

To resort to the standard defence made by the casual racist, I know a lot of Chelsea fans and have counted many of them as my best friends. Kind of. After all, if it’s good enough for the backtracking squirming of the likes of Dave Whelan and Ron Atkinson, it’s good enough for me.

Those Chelsea supporters are not inherently evil as some have been quick to point out. They are morons. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that the attitudes they foster within themselves are bubbling away beneath the surface of many people throughout this country and however much we like to congratulate ourselves on the work we’ve done to kick these things out in our workplaces, football stadiums, etc, we can’t be so delusional to believe that racism’s insidiousness has been eradicated from all aspects of public life.

Today we have a guest post from @TheFalseNein

It’s 1995 and George Graham has decided his time at Arsenal was up – Leaving  Rioch to hold the fort for The Gunners who finished a mediocre 5^th the following season. I say mediocre, but this was a huge improvement on their league position in the previous season, in which they finished 12^th following Graham’s sacking after the scandal he was involved in. Graham’s sacking left the club in a state of disrepair and in need of a pioneer to get the club back to the heights it was at during the 10 years prior. ‘Arsène who?’ the papers questioned, when the Grampus Eight manager was hired in the close season. How could a club with such a glorious history choose such a person to drive them back in to Europe? Sure he had won a Ligue 1 title amongst 3 other trophies in his time at Monaco, but a man who cowers off to Japan when things get tough surely cannot handle the great English Premier League? You can imagine these were the thoughts amongst the media and so too the Gunners faithful followed suit. Arsenal captain Tony Adams famously said ‘He looks like a school teacher’ with the clear implication that he wasn’t all that in football terms.

Wenger introduced new training methods and player dieting, something unheard of and ridiculed in English football. I won’t go into the details because this is an article, not a biography. I’ll let you know in brief then, how the opening decade of Wenger’s reign went:

96/97 – 3^rd after signing Patrick Vieira and Remi Garde

97/98 – 1^st and won the FA Cup after signing Emmanuel Petit, Marc Overmars and Nicholas Anelka with Ian Wright departing after the Cup Final.

98/99 – 2^nd losing the Premier League and the FA Cup to ‘The Class of 92’. Ljungberg and Kanu sign.

99/00 – 2^nd losing the EUFA Cup Final to Galatasaray. Anelka leaves and is replaced by Thierry Henry. Graham’s old guard begin to depart, Lauren brought in to replace Winterburn.

00/01 – 2^nd losing the FA Cup Final to Liverpool. Petit and Overmars leave, Pires, Wiltord and Edu are brought in.

July 2001 – Wenger is offered the chance to join Petit and Overmars at Barcelona, instead he signs a four year deal at Arsenal. Arsène finds his new CB pairing in Sol Campbell and Kolo Toure.

01/02 – 1^st and win the FA Cup. Two doubles in 6 years for Arsène and Arsenal. Gilberto Silva signs.

02/03 – 2^nd and win the FA Cup. Wenger hits out at Manchester United’s unbridled  spending. Brings in Lehmann to replace Seaman. Senderos, Clichy, Djourou, Van Persie and Fabregas are signed.

03/04– 1^st. Arsenal go the entire season unbeaten in the league with 90 points. Reyes is signed midseason to aid the title challenge .

04/05 – 2^nd Arsenal miss out to Mourinho’s Chelsea, who spent £203m in the two windows prior. Arsène’s saving grace is once again winning the FA Cup.

2004 – 2006: The work on the Emirates Stadium finally begins. Wenger describes this as ‘the biggest decision in Arsenal history’. And so it was.

Now I’m not going to pretend the next 8 years are pretty. They aren’t. Arsenal have to start making annual PROFIT while Chelsea spend in excess of £70m each window on transfers alone. Arsène holds his tongue despite only being given a minute budget the previous season (the only signings being Flamini, Eboue and Almunia with no movement in January to aid the title push). The squad are low on morale after missing out on the club’s third double in a decade – and it’s only about to get worse. Robert Pires feels his best days are over and leaves the club, taking his creative contribution with him. The club then receive an offer for want-away captain, Patrick Vieira from Juventus. The Invincibles lost their captain that year and the rest of their spine follow a year later (Ashley Cole, Sol Campbell, Thierry Henry) after the heartbreak of the Champions League Final loss to Barcelona. Half of the squad Arsène built over the last decade have abandoned him, the board say they do not have the funds to properly replace them.

You know how the rest of the story goes. Arsenal endure a lengthy trophy drought between 2005/2014, despite making 5 semi-final appearances and one final appearance, each as agonisingly painful as the other. Many argue ‘Arsène lost us that many big matches.’ but I’d like you to think for a moment who managed to get us in that position in the first place? Of course he could have handled certain occasions better – perhaps set up more defensively etc. as all the twitter experts and Adrian Durham will tell you, but does that take anything away from the credibility of the man? Does that mean he is not a top class manager because he refuses to play negative football and ‘park the bus’? Of course we can pick at individual mistakes Wenger has made over his tenure, he has managed over 1,000 Arsenal games and is bound to get some of them wrong, him being a human being and all.

But this article isn’t about ‘what makes a top class manager’, It’s about the contribution Arsène Wenger has made to Arsenal Football Club. I will remind you again of the events of 2001 where Arsène was asked to join Barcelona or perhaps 2004 when he could’ve taken the coaching role a Real Madrid. How easy would it have been for the Premier League Manager of the Year 2004 to ‘leave on a high’ and build on the 16 trophies he’s already won with one of the Spanish giants? I know world class manager, Jose Mourinho would’ve. I can say that because that’s exactly what he did when he left Chelsea mid season in 2007 because things weren’t going as planned. The difference between the two fantastic managers is that Mourinho would rather retire with a very pretty trophy room, filled with his own personal honours and be known as ‘the special one’ by those who supported his various teams – whilst Wenger wants to make an imprint on one football club, a long lasting legacy that will ensure the success of the club long after he’s gone. When asked about where his titles are Wenger said ‘I don’t know. I don’t like to look back’. He may not care for individual honours, but what he certainly does care about is Arsenal. Arsène sacrificed his own success so that he could make sure Arsenal could stay successful.

It’s been about two years since Arsenal  paid the portion the debt of the Emirates Stadium that they planned too. and club CEO Ivan Gazidis claimed ‘Arsenal are now on course to compete with the greatest clubs in the world, we’re in the process of becoming a modern super club’. He’s not wrong. If you look at the transfers explored earlier in this article, you’ll see that Wenger bought 2 or 3 key players in each season prior to the Invincibles run – gradually building a title winning force that can maintain a challenge in ALL competitions. Arsène unearthed great gems during the trophy drought, players he surely thought would shape the spine of his future title winning team – Cesc Fabregas, Alex Song, Samir Nasri, Robin Van Persie, Gael Clichy, Kolo Toure,Cole. All left to chase glory with sides that had uncapped spending potential. Each time Wenger would establish his first team, get to a stage where he was two players off a side that could win titles, two more would leave – an impossible task when you make world class players but cannot afford to keep them happy. Now we find ourselves in a similar position. As I type this, Arsenal fans are still relishing in their triumph over Manchester United, the club look on course to retaining the trophy they ended the drought with. We also sit in one point off of 2^nd place, many suggest we are one or two players away from winning the title – where have I heard that before? Though due to the debt of the Emirates Stadium being paid off, we are in a position where two players can come in without us having sacrifice one of our star men to afford it.

For me, the sad part is that Wenger feels his own career is coming to a close. When his contract is up in 2017, he’d have finally completed the squad we’ve been building for years. Ozil, Alexis, Wilshere, Ramsey, Walcott, Koscielny, Gabriel and Giroud will all be in the peak years of their respective careers. There you have a spine of a team that can win titles in the present but what astounds me is Wenger’s concern for the future success of the club too. Spending grand sums of money on youth products like Chambers, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Hector Bellerin that’ll surely continue to dazzle and contribute to Arsenal’s success long after Arsène himself is gone. The manager that takes Wenger’s place will have very little to do as the foundations for success will be there ready made for him. The media illusion will tell you that Wenger’s retirement is what Arsenal needed to win titles again, but in reality it was the sacrifices he made that created a platform for us to succeed in the first place. He may not have the titles Ferguson had, but he will leave the club of his heart with the means to continue to be strong without him. My aim of this article wasn’t to put Wenger’s name up in starry lights and glorify everything the man has done. Just to make you think a little before you criticise a man who has always put our club, his club, before himself.

Watching yesterday’s efficient despatch of West Ham in the gentle Spring sunshine of North London it occurred to me that we definitely have our swagger back, domestically at least.

The Appy Ammers arrived with few expectations of a victory after a 14 game run against the Arsenal with not one win but hopeful of making us work, clinging on and eventually stealing a point. Sam has form for this type of result. Never pretty but Sam would never claim to be pretty. Like dogs his teams take on the characteristics of his misshapen bulldog skull.

Alas within a short while it became clear even to the visitors’ noisy contingent that the best result they might hope for would be a respectable defeat rather than a definitive shellacking.

Our midfield movement from the first whistle opened the Ammers up. Players moved not as independent and disconnected units but in sequence, joined in a collective mind to look for the space, the opening, the weak link to exploit. Song to his credit battled hard, too hard once or twice, and Adrian was a warrior between the sticks. But the power was all one way, the force bearing down on the claret and blue goal. Oh yes, the confidence flowed through my system as the ball weaved and span across the baize, stroked, caressed and eventually potted by our finest crop.

And eventually it came, the hammer blow into the top corner just as the half time oranges were being cut. I share below a snap taken by excellent AFC photographer Stuart MacFarlane – if you don’t follow the man in Twitter you should.

I did not realise the cod-piece was making a come back in modern sportswear but you have the evidence.

So 1-0 at the break and cruising, it should have been more.

And then the opening ten minutes of the second half ? Not good, not switched on when we came out and a better side than West Ham might have taken advantage. Fortunately while they had possession and pressed us back, and we appeared unable to keep the ball, they had no sharpness in the box to take advantage. The cloud passed over, the sun shone on. And so, inevitably, we started to control the game again. Santi and Danny came on, and our control developed into total domination. The next goals came, inevitable and very tidy they were against a team who, with ten minutes to go, had clearly nothing left to contribute but were out on their feet.

There may be those who tell you that West Ham, at just 0-1 down were “still in the game” to the 80^th minute. Don’t believe it, They were never, ever in the game.

It finished 3-0, a distinctly unflattering score given our dominance. I did however have my fingers firmly crossed during that last few minutes for that third goal to go in, because of Tuesday. The third goal seemed important, a portent of future events, because of Monaco. And the man from Marseilles duly obliged. You know what I mean.

For all the patterns and systems it is about players and I thought Mesut was magnificent yesterday. A superb contribution with the ball, exquisite movement off it, and great energy. Kosc was a yard faster and a thought ahead of anything West Ham may have had up their sleeve. And le Coq is gradually becoming more creative, not just the “midfield beast” that the  experts demanded.

So enjoy your Sunday. Two interesting games later. I think we set off with great heart to Monaco after one of the best footballing weeks in a long time.