By Tony Attwood
Yahoo and the Telegraph are both running the headline “There can be no doubing Arteta any more” which is a bit rich given that it is exactly what they and many other publishers have been writing across the last six and a half years.
His progress with Arsenal in the league is there for all to see – coming eighth in 2019/20 when he joined the club part way through the season, and indeed eighth the following season as he kicked out those who did not want to be there (at which point some fans wanted him out). That was followed by a fifth, and then three finishss of second (at which point some fans wanted him out – again).
But that was the best run of course since Wenger’s incredible launch to his managerial campaign at Arsenal, which from 1997/8 onward saw the club win the double, come second three seasons running, do the double again, win the FA Cup and then win the league unbeaten. Wenger was derided, just as Arteta has been. Both are geniuses.
Now, as everyone notes, this is our first Champs League final for 20 years and (as they don’t mention) achieved in the face of an endless run of negativity from the media – now abandoned and replaced by talk of Arsenal’s “gnawing anxiety” which apparently Arteta has “harsnessed”. How the commentary has changed, almost overnight!
Of course, the final is going to be tough – it is in a tiny ground with space for a very limited number of supporters – supporters who apparently are going to have to sleep on the streets given the shortage of hotels and boarding houses.
Interestingly, there is no condemnation of Uefa for booking this venue for its final – supporters are of course, always bottom of the list for such organisations (we are seeing the same in the USA for the World Cup) and really of no concern to the media people (who have already booked up the hotels).
And we even have a new word in the vocabulary – tifo – from the Italian tifosi meaning “fan”. Except a tifo isn’t a fan, it is a “visual display” – but never mind. The one thing we can be sure of, those who make up such things expect all of us to be ignorant.
But there is still more to come. If we can beat West Ham on 10 May, Burnley on 18 Ma6y and Palace on 24 May then Arsenal will be champions for the first time since the Unbeaten Season – although that is now no longer called he “Unbeaten Season” by the media as part of their general put down of Arsenal – who for the last few months have been seen only as a bunch of hooligans who manipulate the rules of football by running around at corner kicks.
And you might have caught the TalkSprout rant from Jon Obi Mikel who said, “When I watch Arsenal play right now, they depend solely, solely on corner kicks. You have spent almost a billion, Mikel Arteta… And you’re telling me the only way you can win games is through corner kicks? It’s ridiculous.” It was the theme of last month, being heard in various forms on various outlets over and over again. Now that line is abandoned but will be taken up again if Arsenal lose the final, when we will probably have “They get away with it in the Premier League but not in Europe.”
Still, the drive to make the Arsenal stadium noisier and more passionate has worked. And that is quite something, remembering the eighth-place finishes, and the complaints following three successive runners-up spots, and the suggestion that Arteta did not have a “winning mentality”.
What Arteta has done is improved the atmosphere in the stadium – and indeed rather amusingly, as the Arsenal stadium vibes have got better, so those at New-WHL have got worse. Is that really a coincidence?
But the media needs fantasies. There is talk of Arteta forcing North London Forever, onto fans, talk of how melancholic it is, of how most fans don’t sing it. One can only wonder if the correspondents haven’t been turning up to under-18 matches by mistake.
As Ian Wright so accurately predicted, “The celebration police will be out in force.” While Arteta said, “Now we’re going to the level that I think a top club wants, fighting consistently for the highest trophies. That’s a must, and we have to maintain it.”
So after months and months of put-downs from the media, we have our jubilation and we might remember things like “Mikel Arteta not the right man for Arsenal job” (Sky Sports), copied everywhere down to cut and paste Facebook entries like “ARTETA has proven he’s not the best man for the job. Despite all the support given to him. He still faulters.” And “Arteta not the right man for the Job. He needs to go back and complete his training”. And thousands more commentaries like that.
Meanwhile, some writers have picked up on what we have labelled Arsenal’s “blip” – the sort of drop in form that all clubs suffer at some time or another.
So yes, there are Tottenham fans who still remember that on 31 July last year, Tottenham beat Arsenal 1-2 in a friendly. There were even Arsenal fans who suggested that the manager should go after that, as the team clearly were not ready for this season.
Thus win or lose, the media and those who believe their tripe will turn on Arteta again, because that is what they do. But at least some of us know that we have been watching some of the most exciting Arsenal moments of the last 20 years. And I rather suspect there is more to come.
The most unfortunate aspect is that (as with other current affairs), the media still exerts a strong influence, which even extends to Arsenal’s own supporters, some of whom may be gullible enough to believe the nonsense.
Then there are the pundits, such as Neville and Carragher, neither of whom have any credibility as coaches, who “warn”, “instruct” etc Arteta over what he should be doing.
Perhaps worst of all, the individual self-proclaimed Arsenal fans with a media profiile, (eg Piers Morgan), who claim to know better than Messrs Arteta and Wenger.
At least Starmer keeps quiet on this.
I read today, I must admit with a small element of surprise, that OPTA (with or without a “supercomputer”) have calculated that Arsenal have a 55.76% chance of winning gainst PSG.
Whilst I’m not a huge fan of OPTA per se, they at least do some modelling of probability as opposed to people like journalists, pundits, Piers Morgan and Adrian Durham who seem to just express thoughts without using more than a handful of brain cells.