By Walter Broeckx
Some hate us for what happened to them in the past. The 1989 Liverpool victims. Or the ones like Shearer who came across Arsenal and Arsène Wenger in his Newcastle days and almost always lost in the league and in cup games.
Then you have the Tottenham connection like Linneker and if you take any name out there in pundit land and think of the past you can understand why they have started to hate us and Arsène Wenger.
It all started at the beginning of his career at Arsenal.
I can imagine the pundits some 14 years ago:
A Frenchman ????? Yes.
A FRENCHMAN ??????? Yes.
A Frenchman as manager from Arsenal ??? Yes.
Tell me you are joking ? No.
And when they saw Arsène Wenger for the first time I can imagine their comments:
That guy with his glasses and with the attitude of a teacher is going to be the manager of Arsenal ???? Yes.
He wont last for one week, one month, one season….
But he proved them wrong and still is at our club.
If you want to make enemies in pundit land you just have to make them eat their own words. There is nothing they hate more than having to admit they were wrong. So by succeeding at The Arsenal our manager has made them all look stupid and this is something they will never forgive him. So we have a manager who they don’t like at all.
The second reason why they hate him is for the fact that he is successful. Not only did he prove them wrong on staying that long but also he showed them that he is one of the greatest managers in the EPL. For some it won’t matter that he is French but I can imagine for some pundits this is making things even worse.
By being successful he has not only made them look stupid, not only because they were wrong, but also for the fact that they had laughed at him with his strange habits and changes he brought in the game and in the tactics. Another reason to dislike him and his club.
Another reason is that Arsène Wenger walks in one direction and all the others run blindly in the other direction. For years Wenger has been telling everyone that he wants to keep Arsenal in good financial health and that he never would allow himself to put the future of his club in danger. Unlike other managers we all know and have seen in the game.
And in his teacher-like behaviour he lectures others in how to spend and mostly on how not to spend the money, plus how to run the club on a tight and controlled budget.
And this is another thing the pundits don’t like. The pundits want to see money moving around, signing of big names and praise the managers that splash the cash around. And when the club goes down, the pundits tell them to spend even more money.
Then comes our manager and says: “Listen up every one, you are all doing it wrong”. To take lecture from a successful manager from Arsenal who is wrong… this is to much for them. Certainly when events are proving him right.
So those pundits like to write us off. “Arsenal will drop out of the top 4” sounds very good in pundit land. And when that French cunt then says: “No we will fight for the league” they just laugh it away.
But by mid January that French bloke had taken his Arsenal side to the top of the league. And so they start realising that they were wrong, totally wrong again. And again it is that damned Frenchman that makes them look likes idiots once again.
So how can we let people forget that we screwed up as pundits and showed our total lack of knowledge is the word that spreads around pundit land… ?
Let’s focus on the bad things of Arsenal: Oh look Gallas has stepped on someone’s foot ? Shame, disgraceful, horror, the pundits are rolling over each other in expressing their disgust of… another Frenchman.. who just has made the most horrible tackle ever made in football history. He must be hanged for that at least. And by trying to hang Gallas they hope that it puts Arsenal in a bad day light. And Arsène Wenger as well.
Well dear pundits you maybe fooling some people but you won’t fool us by diverting the attention to Gallas, instead of giving Arsenal credit for overturning an 11 point deficit in less than two months. No you, once again, follow the escape route in the hope people forget you screwed up on Arsenal and Arsène Wenger once again.
It must be difficult to eat your own words and admit you are wrong… And as I have a good heart but a bad character, I really enjoy the fact that we are top and the pleasure is even bigger now I see you twisting and turning to avoid another humiliation by the hands of that bloody Frenchman.
ELSEWHERE….
The moment 100 years ago this week, when the world of Arsenal changed for ever.
The book of 100 years ago which covers the whole story of the creation of the modern Arsenal.
When we get kicked and lose the game,the question i get is ‘Oh,you did not fancy that.But nobody is upset or shocked by it.
Awesome Wenger!!!
THE BIGGEST JOKE OF THEM ALL IS PAUL MERSON,WHAT AN ASS!!!
Walter – an even bigger factor, and one that I do not think can be overlooked is the way that AW has changed us from “boring, boring Arsenal”. For almost 70 years we were successful as a club (2nd most Championships etc etc) but did it by being boring. People could laugh at Arsenal even when we won, by saying we were boring. Tottenham fans could chuckle at us, even though we won Championships and they didnt, by saying we were boring. Utd and Liverpool fans could boast that they won things playing the “right way” and that Arsenal were boring. I grew up knowing we were “boring, boring Arsenal” and even grew to love the moniker. We made a song (1-0 to the Arsenal) out of the very essence of our “boringness”. The pundits that grace our screens nowadays all grew up with that as well, and grew up in a culture in which Arsenal were hated as being the “stuffy, arrogant, and especially BORING club from London”.
Then along came Arsene and changed it all. Within MONTHS Arsene had changed it all forever. One could in fact argue that within minutes of his arrival, when Patrick Vieira emerged from the bench and swept a 40 yard crossfield pass that drew “oooohhhhhs” from the Highbury crowd (I remember that moment so clearly), Arsene had changed everything forever. No longer were we boring. Ever since that moment we not only have continued to be successful (and we should all ignore idiots who dont regard consistent top 4 finishes and Cup semi-finals during rebuilding years as successful) but also we have been unbelieveably exciting, perhaps the best value for paying fans in the entire country. Goals, quite brilliant goals, have flowed from every angle from the feet of some of the most sublime and gifted players in the world. Boring Arsenal? Hah!
So now the Tottenham fans not only have to put up with us being more successful than they are, they also have to accept that while they try to play attractive football, we embody it. And the Liverpool fans curse that their trophy drought (and by “trophy” I mean the ONLY one that truly counts – the League Championship) continues AND they play methodical football, while we play football from the gods and have won four Championships since their last one. Only Utd fans can still lord it over us, and interestingly enough I find that most Utd fans that I know have an enormous respect for Arsene and what he has achieved, because they know he tries to play the game they same way they believe it should be played.
But the pundits, well the pundits have it worst of all. They still hate Arsenal as they did growing up, and still regard us as the “boring, boring” club, but they now must sit there and praise us through gritted teeth and call us “the neutrals favorite” and other sickening stuff like that. Arsene has made us likeable, which for the pundits is the hardest thing of all to swallow. Unfortunately most of the media is controlled by a generation that grew up worshipping Liverpool for their success, fawning over Utd for Munich, the Busby Babes, and Best, Law and Charlton, and HATING Arsenal because we were so darn BORING!!!!
They still hate us, but Arsene has made us into the finest footballing side in England (on our day, with only Barca that could outplay us in Europe) and no longer can they just laugh at us as being boring. So they find any other way possible to hate us.
That is the mark of Arsene Wenger. That is the revolution he has wrought. That is his legacy. Arsene’s legacy will go so far beyond trophies (which is what Fergie will be remembered for). Arsene’s legacy will be for changing the entire historical flow of a club, in a similar way to Bill Shankly, who only won 3 Championships and yet built everything that Liverpool became. In time he will be revered, long after he is gone. But now he is hated.
Walter, they sure don’t like Arsenal because:
(1) To them, Arsenal is the symbol of ‘Johnny Foreigner’.
(2) Arsenal play an aesthetic kind of football they all can only dream of.
(3) Arsenal’s footballing and management philosophy is completely out of their relm.
(4) Our ‘Johny Foreigner’ manager is almost always right. How, in God’s name, are they ever gonna be right if he doesn’t go wrong? (5) They are completely blinded by their hypocrisy, duplicity and xenophia to such extent that they cannot see beyond the start, not end, of their noses.
(6) They suffer from acute DG (Delusions of Grandeur).
(7) They are gravely afraid to be seen to be non-conformist; so if at all they are compelled to agree with Wenger, they can only do it privately.
fantastic post. . . . . LOVE it. hope all the media CUNTS and arsenal / arsene haters out there will eat their words at the end of the season. cheers mate
Walter, you really hit the spot there about the pundit land dominated by the players of other teams. Here in the US without the background of who these pundits are, you are left with question of a big ‘why’. For the recent converts or who discovered the Arsenal late on, it really is a puzzle. It actually starts from the game commentators where they simply sound like they were talking about another game on the side they were following than the one you are watching on TV. This actually drove me to learn more about the Arsenal and read more of the history of English football as a whole.
Paul C. also put things in perspective very well there. I read about the ‘boring Arsenal’ before and these people couldn’t shake off that image from their pea brain. This brings up another point, whatever happened to most of Arsenal players of boring Arsenal? Are they also the critics of Wenger flooding the other Arsenal blogs blinded by enough money not being spent on players? I read some articles or comments of Arsenal’s ex-players of English decent sometimes, but they don’t seem to support the project fully. They seem to be stung by the same bugs the critics had. Is it the same resentment based on Johnny foreigner issue? You wonder sometimes. I still haven’t seen any ex player coming out forcefully defending Arsenal. It’s really sad
AND he’s gone and got rid of Swiss Tony!!
SKY DON’T LIKE US WE DONT CARE
THE SUN DONT LIKE US WE DONT CARE
Merson is an ARSE .Charlie Nicholas is a saint
Getty, I must say that I watched arsenaltvonline after the Bolton game and Nigel Winterburn was a big defender of our title challenge and was one of the only who gave us a chance before the season started.
Paul C, thanks for your comment.
It is a thing I never witnessed in person as it was the days with no live tv games over here and in the short version of the games I never found us boring. 😉
But I can imagine that living in England this is a very big factor. Thanks for adding this with my article.
the days of boring arsenal will return when everybody start to like us.
The problem is that Wenger doesn’t make good news. The media needs something to shout about, now this can be either “Wenger hates English players” or “The vast majority of English players are technically sub standard and are not good enough to compete at the higher levels of football”. This leads to having to face the fact that England will be pretty average at best in the upcoming World Cup. This explains why when Arsenal are discussed the media mentions English players but when other teams are mentioned it is British players. You never heard criticism of Fergie when he had Irwin, Keane & Giggs in his teams. It seems speaking English as your native tongue is enough for other teams but not Arsenal. The interesting thing will be when the current batch of young English players (those who helped to decimate Liverpool in the FA Youth Cup Final last season) begin to make the first team.
The ways things are going by then Liverpool could be bust, ManU could be selling off more players to balance the books and Chelsea’s sugar daddy might be demanding that the club is self sufficient.
Walter – believe me when I say, yes we were boring in those days, as I am sure Tony will confirm as well. Especially under Don Howe, we were painfully boring at times. George Graham had us playing better for a couple of years, but by the end of his reign it was boring again. And of course the Double winning side of 70/71 are always called boring in comparison with Leeds (the Chelsea of those days, a dominant side that probably didnt win as many Championships as they should have).
We as fans enjoyed it. We knew the rest of the country hated us and we loved it. Arsenal have ALWAYS been the most hated club in England, at least since the 30’s. Arsene just made it worse by getting us playing good football.
For a long time, I’ve known there was a strong media bias against Arsenal. Recent seasons only served to reinforce that knowledge. In the furore over the Gallas tackle, the entire media universe forgot that the very same Notlob who were whining about a tackle to everyone and his mother, were the ones who came up with the “strategy” of kicking Arsenal out of games. When they did this, it was declared that Arsenal’s team of “foreigners” couldn’t handle a good old-fashioned British scrap, and Arsenal was roundly advised to toughen up or shut up.
Guess what, hacks? We toughened up. Deal with it!
Its us against the World, well that suits me well coz if we were sh*t know one would hate us so the question is would you rather be a sh*t team and everyone like you or a good team and every hates you, i know which one i would prefer and you know what i love it when we are dirty and aggressive, i know i sound petty but the way we are treated how people come out in the papers saying they are gonna hurt us and still get away with it, i have had enough, i don’t feel bad at all when one of our players hurts another player coz they go on the pitch to hurt us but when we play their game, we are seen as the bad guys but its OK for teams to play dirty against us week in week out and nothing is done about it, f**k everyone, count all the injuries we have had from bad tackles in the last 3 years and you will have such a long list your gonna have to cut down a lot of forests for the paper to write on and that’s why i don’t feel bad when we injure other players. to tell the trust i am very disappointed with the attitude of people in England, England us to have a reputation of being honest but not no more.
What inane, paranoid nonsense this is.
Arsenal is no more ‘hated’ than any other club. Though, Manchester United might legitimately claim a case to be answered.
Our problem, certainly, this season has been that Eduardo is a foreigner who isn’t called ‘Rooney’. That Gallas isn’t ‘honest’ enough to miss a goal ‘handed’ to him on a plate. And that AW has a habit of getting things right more often than getting things wrong.
These things don’t make Arsenal ‘hated’. But it does make you sound paranoid and that’s decidedly something that hinders rather than helps.
There is no doubt about the bias displayed by the pundits. This is most obvious when Man U “grinds” out a win, they are described as resilient; when the gunners do same….crickets. The Gallas tackle was hard, but it was the referee’s job to call it.
Anyone who understand football would love the way The Arsenal plays, would love the philosophy of being financially prudent(the two signings of late-Varmaelen and Arshavin, have been beyond fantastic), would love the patience the club has to develop talents via the youth system(Song, Diaby, Ramsey etc), etc.
Those of us here in the US feel blessed to watch Arsenal play. I have never understood why the so-called pundits always ask Wenger to splash money for a striker on a team with the highest goal tally in all of Europe. I would spend on a CDM cover for Song.
Thanks for the correct spelling george,lol!
P.merson is an ARSE!!!
its not only the pundits(ex players) who hate us, just listen to the excitment of the commentators when our opponents attack us or score, they wet themselves, Arsenal score and they barely raise their tone, when highlights are shown on MOTD and SKY we see all the opponents chances so as to make it look like it was an even game or that our opponents were hard done by, of course highlight every mistimed tackle by an Arsenal player(like the Gallas one) and do not show what happened to Cesc the previous game, and lets not forget that no penalty can be given to Arsenal, why have SKY or the BBC not asked the simple question of “WHY DOES THE HIGHEST SCORERS AND MOST ATTACKING TEAM IN THE LEAGUE ACTUALLY HAVE THE LEAST PENALTIES THIS SEASON” – there would be an outcry if this was happening to MANU, LIVERPOOL OR CHELSEA
Simply superb stuff. No wonder Untold Arsenal is the best place to get your daily dose of Arsenal.
Getting to the actual post, I concede media’s step-motherly treatment towards the team from N5. Not just pundits, or the ref’s, even the likes of FA & UEFA laeve no stone unturned to ensure our ‘Professor’ bites his ass every single time. It’s just that, they end up getting their arse’s whupped en route! Be it limiting the number of foreign imports, restriction on non-British players, the outrageous refereeing decisions, harsh critics, and mostly the manner in which they discard Arsenal as top 4 contenders at the start of each season.
Seriously, do these people even know why is football called the ‘beautiful game’. It’s not because a Wayne Rooney dives & wins a penalty, it’s not because a Drogba, or a Roonaldo for that matter, disgrace our wits by play-acting like puppets, it’s not because Madrid buy the reigning WP of the Year, each year, it’s not because teams like Bolton, Chel@Sea, et al, play long-balls in pursuit of bagging the pre-requisite 3 points, no it’s none of the above.
It’s beauty lies in the way Arsenal caress the ball into the net, in the way they string together passes after passes & literally walk their way into opponents D, it lies in Cesc’s vision, in Arshavin’s venom, in Wenger’s philosophy, in the belief we Gooners have in their ‘Arsenal, in the collosal (read:Emirates) where the ‘beauty’ in football finds it’s genesis. That apart, it’s just another game. It is teams like Arsenal which make it beautiful. Period.
Those duds won’t ever get all of the same, let them not. After all we are the chosen ones. We are the faithful. We are the Arsenal.
“In Arsene We Trust & In Arsenal We Lust!”
Do read the aforementioned to read more on similar lines: (!)
http://11gunners.com/opinion/once-a-gunner-always-a-gunner/483/
BRAVO walter, thats your best yet. blog of the year to you sir..
xx
I’m not gonna bother to see it if will happen but will the press and the pundits now say that MU is a unsporting team because they scored their second goal when a Hull player was injured on the ground ? Well I think we all now the answer already …
Walter the media hate us always have done.listen to talksport and it’s bias towards man utd and Chelsea is vomit inducing creaming themselves at the slighest mention of Rooney lamps Andy Jacobs was beside himself at the thought of his beloved chelski being knocked of top spot banging on about dirty gallas bollocks to the lot of em.We need to use this and have a backs to the wall come out fighting mentality!Pity about Merse loved him as a player legend but gone down in my estimation after today on sky(manulovin)sports.Proud to be a gooner..No one likes us we don’t care!!!!!!Come on Arsenal!
To Es, dit I ever mention that I am indeed paranoid ? 😉 LOL
But let’s see if the pundits and the press are on uniteds back for scoring a second goal with a player on the ground ? If the pundits and the press make the same fuss I will eat my words. I’m not worried that I will have to eat them.
@ ES, it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you. And the press is really out to get us. You cannot call it paranoia on the one hand, and then confirm the very basis for the belief in the media bias on the other.
This is not exactly on point but has been bugging me for some time…prior to our game with chelsea, certain chelsea players (terry, lampard, ballack, a.cole, drogba) had been called off international duty because they were “injured”. I can swear there were statements that drogba had a broken rib and fat frank was four-six weeks out, while cole was also set to miss the arsenal game. Miraculously, the broken rib that caused drogba not to play for I.coast had healed within a week, and lampard was fine after two weeks (they always said he heals fast but come on!). The result, all the mentioned players played against us, but NO ONE even THOUGHT of mentioning all this…MY BET IS THEY PAY AFRICAN TEAMS OFF, AND MAKE SURE ENGLAND PLAYERS ARE ONLY CONCERNED WHEN THEY NEED TO BE (the england match they missed was a friendly)…on the other hand we send v.p. to a friendly and lose him for the season…no one mentions these things though…
CHELSEA…YOU CHEATING CUNTS.
Don’t worry though, Moses is coming soon to lead us out of oppression.
Walter you are the man once again. Great post and absolutely spot on. I’ve lost a lot of respect for some of our ex players as they have become too small minded and eager to please their new paymasters that they rarely have anything positive to say about Arsenal. When you listen ex players from the likes of
Liverpool,manure or chelski they defend their clubs with so much loyalty and vigour you’d think they were still playing for them. People like Wrighty, Merson, alan smith needsto
remember that without the Arsenal they would have been nothing. These guys were legends at the club but now choose to knocks us whenever the opportunity arises. I bet that they ‘ll be the first to jump on the bandwagon if we do win something this season. Well I say stay the fuck away cos only want tru legends like Titi or Paddy as they’ve never knocked the club
It seems that almost any praise that Arsenal gets from the media is backhanded-praise.
For example, almost all headlines about our Captain seem like this: if it weren’t for Cesc, we wouldn’t be in this race. But too bad for Arsenal that he’s either 1.) going to get hurt or 2.) leave for Barcelona because that is his home. Plus, his genius is due to Barcelone, not Arsenal.
Or today’s ridiculous headline from the Daily Star: “Cesc Fabregas Knows He Won’t Win Over Arsenal Fans.” Are these people educated? How the hell somebody write that headline when throughout his interview, he was talking about his devotion and love for Arsenal?
To me, there’s only one conclusion: the media is either STUPID or BIASED.
Probably both. That’s why they hate Arsene so much.
http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m21/dying_spree/Untitled2.jpg
Goals per game on EPL AND Europe ..
And thats without our 2 main recognized strikers /whistles
Why do peoples still asking for a striker again?
We can whinge til the cows come home, but we need a solution.
Here’s is my solution:
Have half a dozen complete nutters in the squad.
I mean , complete nutters, ex-cons, psychopaths, east end hitmen. You name it.
It would help if they support the Arsenal, but at the end of the day, don’t obsess,
they are just mercenaries. (Not Merson-aries, haha)
Pay them all a tidy sum, 30k a year would be peanuts to us and a lot to them, and they could have other jobs.
Make sure they are all reasonably fit , lol, fit for purpose.
OK, now, you have a match that you can afford to lose, say an FA CUP match. Great.
Who are you playing?
Is it a team who has
1) previously scythed you off the park
or 2)
a team that expresses the desire to do so in the forthcoming fixture?
If the answer is yes to either great.
Even better if the answer is Stoke Shitty and the answer is yes to both.
Great!
Send out the hatchet men and play the game Stoke so earnestly want!
Play in the spirit of the game!
Chop their fucking legs in half – job done…….and after Arsene can say, in his inestimably
laconic style:
‘Well, they don’t like it up ’em”
Job done
@Mark —
Yes, that’s what they do in ice hockey. They call them enforcers, and they are literally boxers on skates.
one word……….brilliant…..absolutely brilliant…….
Spot on article…(just that four letter word of female anatomy is, in my eyes, a bit strong, especially in a context that is still pretty much male dominated, even if fictionally paraphrasing the mind of an arsenal hating pundit)…this is not an issue of PC, just think it’s an ugly, ugly word….anyway, enjoyed all the articles on this site that I’ve read and will read in the future
Mark… Peter Storey?
I was thinking more like the B-specials
Mark 5.25am nice one made me laugh love to see keown and bould come on as enforcers against Stoke today wouldn’t know what hit em also Paul Davis was a bit tasty in his day boom!!
Anonymous Gun, great link!!
Make it two strikers 😉
P.Jane, I have been thinking about that subject over the past months or is it years ? We always send our players even when they haven’t played for us after an injury and we still let them go.
I have noticed with some MU players over the past years when for a friendly they had something hurt and couldn’t play for the national team and when the league was on JC had come by and had produced a miracle…
So I really think that MU and Chelsea put pressure on their players to fake injury or as you say they pay those African country’s a sum to leave their players at home…
My point is that Arsenal are an easy target for overreaction in the media because of the foreign make up of the club.
Rooney, Lampard, Terry, Gerrard, et al all get a free pass because they’re English. But even accepting this as axiomatic doesn’t remotely prove the case that the media ‘hates’ Arsenal.
Already this season, while dismissing our chances of the title, pundit after pundit, has been waxing-lyrical at our style of play.
That said, we are talking about football journalists here – a section of the fourth estate that’s hardly renowned for either intelligence or integrity. (Indicating that ‘hate’ would be subservient to the antithesis of both those concepts given the chance).
That is why the notion of ‘hatred’ is paranoid.
Smart people are allways misunderstood, which pretty much is the case with Arsene unfortunately, he’s just in a total different league then the so called pundits et all.
first post here but been reading for a real long time now and just wanted to say a quich hi and to please keep up the great work! one of the very few blogs that is really worth reading and looks at things from a positive perspective and the way arsene sees it (which is the way everybody should see it ;))
anyhow great read as usual!
Es, I had my doubts to use the word hated. I could have said dislike or so but that seemed so soft and as the pundits get hard on our back when ever they can I thought I also could use a hard word.
I can also admit that not all of them “hate” us but the way some react I really think that ‘hate” is the right word to describe their feelings.