Belief.

We live in a world where every aspect of our lives is controlled by belief.

This most intriguing of psychological states is perhaps responsible for the shaping of our world more than anything else. The romantics may argue love and the cynics may argue greed is equally responsible, yet nothing is more dangerous than a man with either a lack of or an abundance of faith. From the dawn of civilisation, belief has elevated men to the heavens and dragged them to the depths of hell. Alexander The Great conquered the known world not because of his troops or unprecedented strategic mind but because he believed he could. Yet the excessive nature of his beliefs led to his downfall as his men mutinied against an invasion of India after years at war. Gaius Juluis Caesar’s belief in his abilities led him to conquer France with his faith in his political nous helped him dispatch his rivals in Rome. Yet his convictions that he should introduce reform and that he should be held accountable to no man lead to his rather bloody end.

While remarkable individuals such as these exuded faith in themselves others have displayed trust in existential beliefs. In 1095 Pope Urban II decreed that the Holy Land should be liberated from those of other religious faiths that held it due to his beliefs. Thus began almost 200 years of unabridged violence and hatred in the Middle East, the aftermath of which can still be felt today. Countless wars have been fought due to beliefs about war, land, rights and the belief in the sanctity of freedom. It has enabled our species to take to the skies, touch the highest peak on our world and even walk on the moon. It has also caused the extermination of 6 million Jews, ingrained prejudice and terrorist attacks. A sombre and most probably inappropriate time for me to finally start talking about Arsenal then you may think.

The Gunners are at yet another pivotal moment in our season and it’s safe to say that the fans have gone well and truly mental this season. I would suggest that the increased expectation this season due to our first truly world class signing in years has altered the chemical balance of several Gooner’s brains. It’s certainly more polite than hypothesising that they may in fact, just be idiots. This article is being penned on the night of our victory over Liverpool and the idea of a blog on belief occurred to me during the build-up to the game. Various degrees of belief were on show, from the belief that “Arsene has went mental” spiel from renowned doom-monger LeGrove to the belief that “We should support the team” from neutrals to the belief that” Everything will be absolutely fantastic” from the almost nauseatingly optimistic Blackburn George. I of course retained my belief that James ‘Raul’ Stokes is a filthy harlot with such perverted desires even Giroud’s mistress couldn’t fulfil them. While observers of the Arsenal online community will no doubt find that these individuals expressing said opinions hardly ground-breaking, it did intrigue me.

We are all perfectly aware that LeGrove and his cluster of likeminded individuals will spew forth negativity and general discontent until the club succumbs to their poisonous bile and eventually relents, allowing them places as Manager, Fitness Coach and CEO of our beloved club. Equally certain is that Blackburn George shall beam forth positivity, mowing down those that dare question the will of his God on his motorcycle of delusion. If one said the sky was blue the other would say green. We know they will never convince each other that their beliefs are correct.

Yet the notion that our chances should be dismissed so readily before the game is even played is incomprehensible and it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how football is actually played. Using such warped logic surely Fulham fans shouldn’t bother existing as on paper, they are the worst team in the league and must therefore be destined to lose every game? Such fervent belief that our team do not have the capability to win is laughable, never mind that they may not even be able to compete. As a side note, what alarms me more than that belief though, is the outpouring of bile that seems to accompany it. If an opinion is posted it will typically be followed with several people posting insults to Wenger, the players, the board or anyone that crosses their path. It is shameful to see and lets all our fanbase down.

It seems strange to me that even during the good times, when we have beat Liverpool twice, Spurs twice, topped the league and progressed from the Champions League Group of Death that certain individuals have displayed a complete lack of faith in our team. To examine our players, the conviction and abilities they possess and yet still determine that they are unable to compete shows, for me, someone who struggles to comprehend that we have progressed from the team of pretty passers to a team worthy of the club. A desire to see Arsenal fail so that changes are implemented is equally as disgusting.

Our manager and players have spoken several times of their trust in each other and belief that they can end our wait for a trophy.  I retain the belief that Arsenal can win the league this year. More than that, I have faith that we can win the double of the League and FA cup. Whilst others will disagree, as is their right, I shall remain convinced of our team’s qualities, although perhaps not to the radical degree of Blackburn George and his ilk.

Since I have harped on about belief so much I thought I’d leave you with a 2500 year old quote that remains relevant that we can all appreciate:

“Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.”

Thanks for reading and to George for hosting this on his wonderful site. I’ve been Dyllan Munro and feel free to drop a comment and let me know what you think of the article. You can also reach me on twitter @goonerdyllan. Thanks everyone.

Today a guest post by @anicoll5

A mild glow suffuses my normally stern features this Monday morn, allowing my mind to meander across the memory of a fine game of football with both a performance and a result I had been hoping for.  Very nice, very nice indeed.

 Top marks to our visitors who put together a great display going forward and on another day and with a scintilla of better fortune might have come away with a replay, maybe more. A disappointing comment from Rodgers regarding the “better team lost”. That however will remind me why I try never to listen to post match interviews with managers all of whom have a tendency to talk utter bollocks, the adrenals coursing wide open, swivel eyes loons to a man.

 Of the match itself three features struck me. First, that it is a long time since I have been on the edge of my seat like that. 2-0, 2-0, 2-0, 2-0 and even our recent 0-0 was nowhere near as hard a watch as that. I suspect the level of sustained concentration required among our defensive back five was tested yesterday at the Emirates as it has not been tested this season. And did they crack ? No they did not. And the longer the game went on the less likely it was that we would crack.

 Second, I doff my ceremonial top hat to Lukas Fabianski and to YaYa Sanogo. Two players at different ends of their AFC club careers but both faced the monstrously difficult test of coming into a side from the bench, with very little first team action, in a tie that was explosive action from the first whistle. We saw how well they both did. Lukas, with a thousand snide remarks waiting to be launched  if he made one mistake, put not a foot wrong. And YaYa, while showing few of the silky skills he is renowned to possess, gave Agger and Skrtel no end of an battering. Great afternoon lads.

 Third, an unfortunate amount of attention has been focused upon the challenge of the Ox on Suarez and the alleged second “penalty”. Referee Webb excoriated across the media with the usual hysteria, Scousers setting fire to themselves in protest, novelty tee shirts etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I find the commotion laughable. A referee is entirely within their rights to have the most profound doubts concerning a foul being committed when the apparent victim of the offence launches himself into the air, performs a genuine somersault, and twists into a half pike before crashing to the floor. If the referee has a doubt then he must not give a penalty. Any player from any club who tries to cheat in so blatant a way should be punished, not praised. I trust Webb will follow through on that policy next time.

 And so we stride onward to Wednesday, a glint in our eye.

If Arsenal lose today and lose heavily on Wednesday they will be left with only the league to play for, with their confidence in tatters and the fan base in meltdown, baying for the manager’s blood.

At least that is the doomsday scenario that has been put forward by some, including John Cross and  Paul Merson among many others.

They may well be right, but why is it restricted to Arsenal?  It surely equally applies to City and Chelsea.  Ok, they don’t face the Champions of Europe, but still.

Is it that for some strange reason our fans demand more than those of the two free spending oil tankers?  Or are we more susceptible to fits of mass depression?

If Liverpool lose, what have they got left?  The league?  The much derided 4th place trophy?  I think this game will be very difficult for us.

We beat them very comfortably in the league at home, but that was a long time ago.  We were in much better form and had a certain young Mr Ramsey in the team.

Liverpool will be very confident after the thrashing they dished up to us last week and they are the form team in the country at this moment.  Add to that they will play their best eleven and we won’t have anywhere near our best, on top of the obvious that will miss out due to injuries, and there will be quite a bit of rotation given who we play on Wednesday.

All we can hope is that somehow Arsene manages to find a balance in the team that has somewhat deserted us since Aaron began to tire shortly before his injury.  I know we have been winning in that time, but it was not against teams in this sort of form.

I would love to write that I’m full of confidence and winning will be a formality, but that would be a lie.

Big test?

Indeed it is.

Today a guest post stolen  from @shotta_gooner (shhhh he doesn’t know yet.)

The idea that we would simply walk over Man Utd is simply jaw-dropping in its stupidity.  This is a good team who are currently champions of England.  After a run of poor results, pride alone dictated they would put up a strong performance against a big rival like Arsenal.  They came determined not to concede yet we were able to create five decent chances,  most in the last thirty minutes.

Yet some punters at the Emirates were booing at the end.  Frankly this mentality is stupid to the nth degree.  There is an alarming sense of self-entitlement that I hoped would have subsided given how hard this squad has worked to be in their current position.  And without two of our best players, Ramsey and Walcott.

I partially blame this emotive ignorance to the nonsense spouted by the media.  For example on my feed, there was Lee Dixon lamenting all game that we lacked the speed to go behind United and moaning that the Ox should be brought on.  As anyone who follows Arsenal could have predicted, the Ox was brought on in the 70th minute to have a go at a tiring United defense.  But he immediately demonstrated why he was a sub by losing the ball in his first attempt at a dribble setting United up for a counter-attack.  Did Lee Dixon admit that maybe he was wrong and Wenger right to focus on taking care of the ball with Rosicky?

Who is surprised he did not?

Take another example.

A tiring Arsenal in the 92nd minute, having recently mounted a failed attempt on goal, recover the ball deep in their half.  United cover all the passing lanes hunting the ball to have a final attempt on our goal.  Our midfielders and defenders play it safe, knocking it around, hoping for an opportunity to go forward.  The crowd starts howling to get the ball forward.  Lee Dixon echoes the sentiment.  Jack, the archetypical Englishman, receives the ball and instinctively does the crowd bidding, tries to force the ball forward and loses it within our half and United spring into the attack.  Happily our defenders were on their toes and win back the ball.

Does Lee Dixon acknowledge that Jack was naive and unprofessional?

Hell no.  Instead the producers turn up crowd noise to emphasize the stupid booing.

This is the kind of nonsense that have many fans emoting rather than reflecting.  It was a bloody good point and a damn better performance than last Saturday.

One point off the top.  Twelve games to go.

It’s all up for grabs.

We all form opinions based on our knowledge of particular subjects. Most reasonable people would accept that if this  knowledge is limited , then the value of our opinion is similarly limited. Why then does it appear that this simple equation is not applicable to football ?

I believe the reason is that people way overestimate their knowledge of football.

It also seems to me that the more someone knows, the less sure of their conclusions they are. In other words the more stupid you are , the more you believe your opinions are correct.

People write blogs spewing their ideas about tactics , line ups  and formations sure in the belief that they are right. Then they go back to their totally unrelated jobs (if they have one) or carry on with their homework.

A rough guide in judging a bloggers worth is simply to look at the comments section. I understand the “birds of a feather  flock together” and generally the majority of regular posters will be of like mind to the blogger, but when the comments are clearly written by halfwits, its reasonable to assume the blogger himself is none to sharp.

Of course there are exceptions. Its possible that the blogger is smart enough to have identified his market and exploits their stupidity in order to further his/her agenda, whatever that might be.

The value of these bloggers opinions is seen as being tied to the number of readers or followers. If they are getting 10.000 hits per day it could mean no more than 10.000 idiots agree with what is being said.

Unfortunately what these bloggers say is taken as gospel by those least able to think for themselves .

There are hundreds of Arsenal bloggers and the vast majority of them are so far up their own ares that it defies belief. There are of course exception who are balanced, knowledgeable and informative ,some are even funny . I wont list any ,in case I leave some out, and you know me, I don’t want to upset anyone.

Its spread now to Podcasts. Dozens of them all giving their opinions on Arsenal matters , as if they know what they are talking/shouting/ranting about.

Strikes me everyone wants to be Arseblog. Well here is the thing, he was in first and you wont be.

I just wish everyone would stop trying promote themselves and get on with supporting the club.

If you are a blogger and get upset by people questioning your credentials, here is an idea, include your CV in the next blog you write. Lets see how qualified you are ?

And yes, I am aware of the irony of a blogger moaning about bloggers.

A guest post by @MuppetGooner

The Liverpool result opened the usual can of worms in some quarters. The resurfacing of  people that want Wenger out embittered by 8 years of failure. To remind those people, yes, there are no trophies to speak about, but he has taken Arsenal to a Champions League final, a semi final, 2 quarters and the last 16 twice.

In the league we have one 2nd place, two 3rd places, and four 4th places. A lot of clubs would enjoy this record. Look at Everton, a club similar to us in stature and historical record – they come nowhere near this. Villa too, with a greater net transfer spend than us in the last 10 years, fall into this category.

With regard to the Champions League, historically, we have never been in the final or semi final of the European Cup. In the last 8 years, in the league, we have never finished below a team with a lower wages spend except for maybe Liverpool on 1 occasion, when they finished 2nd (the Rafa rant year).

Last year, we finished just behind City and Chelsea, who had a higher wage bill and substantially higher transfer bill. The people who continually attack Wenger and his record blithely ignore the huge amounts of money spent by City and Chelsea do it in a way that they somehow believe that the money shouldn’t make any difference.

Last summer showed that the small pool of the best players were mostly not available to us. Yes, we managed to get Ozil, but there were other players that we did not get, simply because they were unobtainable, in the price bracket of the likes of PSG and City. The likes of Fernandinho and Cavani spring to mind here. Other players, like Cabaye and possibly Higuain became overpriced, and didn’t represent value. The market price being set and skewed by the sheiks and oligarches.

In general the debilitating effect of not securing the best players is two fold. You are left to skirmish for the best players in the 2nd tier pool. You then have to fight the opposition, who have those best players, with inferior ones.

In the wake of the Liverpool result we hear that the transfer market in January was a missed opportunity. We should have signed a striker, a midfielder and another player. These demands are risible. We face all the problems that we had in the summer and players are more scarcely available in January.

The pool of top class players is a very small, finite one. And to get them is not easy. Every club has scouts posted now, not just in Europe, but worldwide. The trick that Wenger pulled, when he managed to secure Vieira, Henry, Petite, Gilberto etc i.e. 4 world Cup winners, will never happen again. Can you imagine, in today’s climate of information, news and awareness, being able to sign 4 Spanish players who had just won the World Cup  – absolutely no chance.

The goalposts have been moved considerably.

A couple of years ago we went to South America to sign an Argentinian player, Alvarez. Who was on our tail ? Inter Milan and Spuds. Spuds follow us everywhere. He went to Inter instead of us. We were linked to Holtby (somewhat tenuously at the time), look where he ended up. We were actually in for Vertonghen , who ends up at Spuds because he wants 1st team football. Last summer, Higuain went to Napoli when it looked like he was coming to us. There were other players too, who went elsewhere. 

For these reasons the detractors are wrong to come out with such ludicrous demands for players that we can supposedly so easily get. They are also wrong to dismiss the previous 8 years as being a failure. Moaning about a failure of winning a trophy despite a large wage bill. But we have still not underachieved based on our resources, even if you include the wage bill. You can argue that we have underachieved based on expectations, i.e your view of what we should be winning, but as an apologist,  I would argue the impact on our resources of the stadium move. One soundbite I never hear in the press is that the Arsenal stadium move cost half a billion.

The detractors complain instead about other stuff , like we don’t have a “winning mentality”, which is just pure nonsense. Or about the “Bould Effect”. Arguing that Bould should have been brought in sooner. Conceding 6 goals at Man City and 5 at Liverpool kind of puts paid to that argument I think.

The stance the club have adopted is that we should be self-sustainable, with plain vanilla economics. Yes, the long term commercial deals that we have signed give us more spending power, and we will be able to incrementally add marquee players of the quality of Ozil to the squad. But if you demand instant success, then you are deluded. Financial fair play has not yet arrived, and to my knowledge, I haven’t seen a single club sanctioned by UEFA for having massive debts and breaching the rules. Also, the science of squad building takes time. We are not able to spend £250m over a couple of transfer windows, and nor would we want to, even if theoretically possible. In any case, what Chelsea did at the time, around 2003, would no longer be possible now, as there are more players (clubs) in the market.

Despite these difficulties, I still believe we are in a great position. Even if you don’t agree, which you can do, that the Liverpool performance was a blip in an otherwise consistent run of over 40 games in the premiership, where we have amassed the largest points total.  The majority of our players are in long term settled contracts, they are young, we can hold on to them now. The Ozil transfer has proved a marquee player will come to Arsenal, which proves further players will come. But this is not a galactico argument. We are already benefiting from the long term foundation and strategy laid down years ago. The Hale End Academy with it’s indoctrination of the Arsenal way. The new training ground. Signing a core of 6 young british players on long term contracts. The realisation of the potential of young players brought in such as Szczesny, Ox, Ramsey, Wilshere, Walcott, Gibbs. 

But being optimistic is not being expectant. It is arrogant to expect success. If you spend a lot of money on Arsenal, you may have a right to complain on the return on your investment, if you view things in that way. But for me, the point is that the winner takes all culture is nauseating. The sensationalism of the press, depicting our season as either a success if we win all 4 trophies, and a failure if we don’t win anything, is nauseating. We can hope for incremental improvement, but to call for heads to roll without any perspective of what we are up against is stupidity in the extreme. Some clever people on the board are taking the long view.

Lost property?  A towel thrown in by some fans on Saturday …

So there we have it, the moment the media, pundits and moaning fans were waiting for.

The implosion predicted for 24 games came to pass. We were exposed as the weak-spirited over-rated shower of shite that we are. All is lost.  Give it up, throw in the towel and hope to finish 4th.  Blah, blah, blah.

After the game I tweeted this,

“The irony of fans calling the team “bottlers” whilst throwing the towel in after one poor game is lost on them.”

However, there is no getting away from the fact that we were thrashed 5 – 1 by Liverpool and it could have been much much worse.

Every other loss this season I have found mitigation for, not this time though.  We were abject.

To be honest, I don’t know where to start, but I suppose I have to start somewhere.

It’s easy to say that we conceded five goals so the defenders were poor, and they were, but they were cruelly exposed by a midfield that can be best described as inept.  We didn’t have a half-decent midfielder on the pitch until the hour mark when Rosicky took to the field.

You have to credit Jack for his fighting spirit, but that aside he was dire.  Not more so than Arteta and Ozil however.  All three were either dwelling on the ball or simply giving it away whilst appearing to totally neglect their defensive duties.

Without Ramsey the balance in midfield has all but disappeared.  So you could question why Rosicky didn’t start as he seems the only one who can fix that failing.

Why Gibbs didn’t start against a team littered with pace is another question that could be legitimately asked.

Giroud was starved of anything, but when, oh when, will he realise that he never beats an opponent with trickery, all that happens is possession is lost.  Still its hard to think any striker could have done much with the service he got, or should I say “didn’t get.”

Arsene said afterwards:

” At half-time I could have taken a lot of people off.  I just think the whole team failed to turn up with the right performance.”

and:

” Maybe it’s better if I don’t talk too much, go home and respond well on Wednesday night because I include myself in that performance.  It raises the questions that we have to answer on Wednesday night.”

At least Arsene is questioning himself, as he should.

Right, rant over.

City dropped 2 points unexpectedly and that leaves us second, 1 point behind Chelsea.  Hardly the end of the world and they both have to go to Anfield yet.  There is still all to play for.

We need to show a bit of this:

Now is not the time to panic or lose faith.

Up the Arse!

A guest post from Arse or Brain (@arse_or_brain)

The answer to this question can be different not only in people’s opinion but also the context in which you ask it.  After a very quiet stadium against Crystal Palace I had a very heated discussion with a friend I have been following Arsenal with around the country and abroad over the last 30 years.  You would imagine after such time our views would align, much like women’s periods.  However, on the subject of whether the fans should inspire the team – or the team should inspire the fans – we are poles apart.

While this issue will never be black and white, each are incumbent upon each other to inspire in certain situations and to a greater or lesser extent depending on what the occasion demands, I feel the greater responsibility should always be on the supporter to do all they can to lift whatever performance they are watching.

Apart from the embarrassment of the small amount of away fans out-singing the rest of the stadium every home game, I feel players should ride on a wave of noise towards the 100% performance to which we all aspire.

It is why home games used to have such an advantage.  It is why away teams are told – regardless of tactics – silencing the home fans is first on the list.  It is why teams like to attack their loudest end in the second half and it is why many goals are scored in the final minutes when the crowd are “sucking the ball in to the net.”

Will paying players more money increase their performance?

Will guilting them into a performance by booing them work, or will staying quiet, or grumbling, lift their game?

No, actually roaring them on is the most effective way to make them fly.

I have often heard the argument the players should give the crowd something to cheer and in some circumstances I agree. However when a stadium is still from the start of the game, playing at 100% must be more difficult.  I would also ask why, with all the modern media around, someone would want to spend money and time not supporting the team?  Do you sit mute and wait for something magical to happen or do you sing your heart out to try and inspire that magic?

The problem has been acknowledged by some fan groups with both RedAction and A.I.S.A talking to the club and making suggestions to improve atmosphere.  The teen for a tenner section is normally very vocal and the singing section at least produces songs from one part of the ground.  These initiatives on their own are not nearly enough and at the moment we have a top class stadium, a top class team but the *HOME fans are bottom of a very poor league.

*The emphasis is on home because our away fans are second to none.

Doing ‘a Likely Lads’; as tough today as it’s always been …

Arsenal in recent years has been subjected to levels of abuse from sections of its own supporters way in excess of what might be expected for a club routinely competing in all of England’s – and Europe’s –  biggest competitions.  Indeed, there are clubs that have been relegated with considerably less acrimony than the routine nastiness regularly dished out by a small minority of ‘our own’.

Working out what could possibly be behind the worst of the vitriolic verbal assaults on the club is confused by the presence of a good number of what we might also describe as ‘glory-hunters’ – those casual critics who spend much of the time moaning about anything and everything, often on the flimsiest of pretexts with little supporting evidence to back up their banal, negative claims. These more casual critics of course come from all walks of life and are not unique to any age group or background.

But the hardcore club basher – the perpetrator who is often aggressive and abusive to anyone opposing him rarely permits rational debate for any real length of time before the inevitable vitriol starts up again.  These are individuals who appear to be anything but Arsenal fans, such is their disaffection from the club.  Like a prisoner removed from society and denied the vote, they couldn’t feel less ‘apart’ from the club if they tried.

Surprisingly, I actually have a certain amount of sympathy for the genuinely disenfranchised fan.

Imagine, when the cost of doing so was just about still affordable, that you had been a season-ticket holder and a home (and maybe an away) game regular all your supporting life.  And that your Dad had been, also.  As was his Dad, your brothers and your dad’s brothers.  Maybe your old mum used to go, before her leg or hip got too bad?  Imagine you were related to one of the more than 500 now deceased fans whose ashes are scattered over the much loved – indeed, the venerated – Highbury pitch.  And imagine being of modest means, gradually priced out of regular attendance as your mates were also side-lined and dispersed by a game and an institution that was undergoing a revolution right in front of your disbelieving eyes.

Imagine watching Highbury being partially demolished for flats and replaced by a new but very alien space, rapidly filling with a new generation of fans and visitors.  Imagine that the long-held dream of taking your own children to games had effectively been supplanted by that new generation of fans and visitors.

The ‘gentrification’ of the club has not come without a cost, for some.

For a time, I was once able to take my place alongside the old guard fans who used to go to Highbury, just like my Dad before me.

But for me, the Emirates project spoke of opportunity and excitement – the possibility of being able at last to properly compete with Man u, Barcelona and Real Madrid.  To finally go up a level and join the top table of clubs for whom success was a byword.  I was one of the lucky ones able to afford the move. But my Dad, after that first Emirates’ season, being retired, was unable to repeat the season-ticket owning experience and has, like so many others, simply faded away.

Highbury held 38,000 by the end of its working life.

My guess is that a proportion of those have, like Dad, been unable to join in the fun at the Emirates but, unlike Dad, refuse to go away and have in recent years found, in Twitter in particular, a vehicle through which they can attack the club at will.  Radio phone-ins, blogs, you name it, are all fair game, and all are legitimate weapons of war to the dispossessed.

Not everyone, by any means, who criticizes the club are former season-ticket holders from the Highbury era but many are carried along by those for whom no amount of success will ever compensate for the loss of their match day experience spent alongside friends and family; an experience that stretched back generations.  Dressed up as concern for an absence of trophies in recent years, this particular red herring is as relevant to their real complaint as their attacks on Ozil and Giroud for being ineffective, Wenger for not spending ‘the money’ or for not replacing RvP, and the Board for raising prices.

So whilst I don’t agree with them, their actions or their views, yes, I do have some sympathy.

Imagine in ten years’ time someone decided to move the Arsenal ‘franchise’ abroad somewhere, say Spain, France or Germany (as unlikely as that now seems).

Would I be likely to hold back in my criticism of the club?  Would I care about the impact of my words?

Would I even care if they won anything, anymore?

So what about the future – are we destined to always have this hideous split amongst our own supporters?  Will the price of joining the ‘top table’ of Europe’s footballing elite be a prolonged near-civil war fought online and elsewhere by the very fans who once found camaraderie and common purpose in supporting, unconditionally, the club we all loved?

My own view is that the areas behind the goals should be made standing and should be available at a fraction of the current price.  I believe that some of those spaces should be made available to season ticket holders but also there should be many tickets available on the day.  I think the season tickets should have the option to cover just league matches or include cup games also, to enable the price to be even more affordable for those who might otherwise struggle to pay.

My view of the pitch when I’m sitting down, in the North End, with the goal on the left just out of shot …

… and my view of the pitch standing up.

That there are presently no standing areas in the English game is hardly AFC’s fault but the potential for change could certainly work in all the clubs’ favour as much as the fans.  Whether there is stomach within our own club to provide the necessary leadership on this issue at FA and government level is not known to me and in any case, the club acting in isolation, could hardly expect too much success.

But the benefits, not just to Arsenal, are such that this kind of development should, in my view, be everyone’s number one priority.

Well, once they’ve sorted out introducing video technology and improving the ref’s, obviously …

* ‘Doing a Likely Lads’ has lived on as a phrase used in England to describe the predicament of anyone trying to avoid the results of a game before getting to watch a recording later. The show first aired in 1973.

The Emirates Stadium – the ultimate symbol of a stunning club transformation

The club bashers are an odd lot.

This is something that tends to be borne out if you engage in civil conversation and avoid the interaction descending into a steaming pile of swearyness. Their logic tends to be flawed, their arguments unsound and inconsistent.  They have backed themselves so far into the corner of discontent they genuinely have no idea how to get out of it.

Bearing in mind we are top of the league and have been for most of the season and are continuing to perform well in two major cup competitions I have, in recent days seen the club heavily and passionately criticized for the following:

* failure to replace RvP with a similar quality striker
* the 3% ticket price increase which would help fund such a replacement and other similar acquisitions
* the supposed poor quality of recent additions to the squad – specifically Giroud and Ozil
* failure to spend up our reserves, said now to stand at a whopping £100,000,000 – a sum that is small change for the Oilys but, misspent by us in a rush of blood to the corporate head – as AW has said – could set us back two or three years
* failure to deal with deadwood quickly enough in the past, continued abuse of Diaby
* signing an injured player despite the negative financial cost to the club for the short duration of the injury
* that old favourite, the medical team.
* Arsene’s new contract and salary

These are the criticisms that spring to mind from just the last few days – they are hardly consistent with a club in the position we currently find ourselves in and one is pretty much forced to conclude that the worst of the abuse is coming from those disenfranchised by the move from Highbury to the Emirates.  For them, on pitch success is of little value, it’ll never bring about a return to the old days and the old ways. They are now effectively the enemy within and their spurious and largely unwarranted attacks simply have to be rebutted as and when they appear.

I can not think of any other club that finds themselves in our position in the league, playing the way we are playing, with the financial stability and power that was built from the bottom up, with the brightest of futures before us – ever being subject to this level of criticism.

Neutrals just look on in bemused wonderment.

Sadly for the club, I don’t see them going away anytime soon but I DO see them becoming marginalised by our success and rendered irrelevant by the club’s overall situation in terms of its fiscal prowess and unique levels of managerial talent and stability.  Not to mention its truly outstanding squad.

About a year ago I was genuinely concerned that the ‘end of era’ prophecy could effectively see AW driven from the club by a tide of negativity rising on the back of the majority of fans.  Thankfully, success on field and good sense off it has prevailed and Wenger’s signature on a new about-to-be-signed contract will underline the sea-change we have just been through.

Whether any other club would attempt what AW and Arsenal pulled off in the first decade or so of the 21st Century seems extremely unlikely given the challenges that have to be confronted.  When simply attempting to continue Ferguson’s success is proving to be so much harder than anticipated, who’d fancy being in the shoes of Spurs, Everton, or Liverpool, where real change is required in order for them to truly join the top table of the European elite.

For they, as much as we, have witnessed first hand the birth of a super club.