By.Don McMahon
The recent mini-crisis, otherwise known as the media tempest in a teapot or the aaa meltdown or the night of the brain-dead(the aaa national holiday), allowed me and most of humanity to appreciate how dramatic the media and our fickle aaa plastic fanboys can be. The Wenger out chants once again rang through the halls of the asylums and press-rooms (one and the same thing in my opinion) of the nation and as is his habit, Piers Morgan, the patron saint of the aaa, railed against all things Arsenal.
I wondered aloud about how so minor an event as us losing to Monaco at home could raise such a furor and such chagrin among those who know better than Wenger. It gradually dawned on me that these people cannot or will not take Arsenal one day at a time. What I mean by that is the following :
a)When the Arsenal are doing well….they will find a cloud behind every silver lining and will go back 10+ years to find one.
b)When Arsenal do poorly, as they do on occasion, they will trumpet their disdain for Wenger, the deadwood or lazy, overpaid eager to depart players and especially the AKBs who remain faithful and patient to everything AFC.
c)For them the season starts and ends in disasterous circumstances, with their latest humiliation being the loss and their ubiquitous rant being about how we are getting worse or have not and will never gain the unattainable heights of the Invincibles.
d)When gently reminded that there are more things to play for and win, they dismiss any suggestions that the future is hopeful or bright but prefer to wallow in their wounded hyperbole.
e)They will raise their blessed St.José on a pedestal and rail about how poor Arsenal are compared to the big teams in the EPL and elsewhere. They totally ignore the incontrovertible evidence that shows EVERY team has its issues and off days and despite having superior resources to the Arsenal, still underperform on a regular basis.
Those who have played or officiated the game at a high level know every team has a bad day at the office once in awhile. If we remind them of that fact they rocket off on a tangent about how it wasn’t just a bad day at the office but rather a perfect example of how bad Arsenal really are and how incompetent Wenger is. It isn’t just a bad day but for them, the apocalypse from which there is NO return.
When gently reminded that few if any employees get fired for having an off day, they fire back that few if any employees earn what these professionals do. When asked what that has to do with having an occasional off day, they are adamant in decrying the lack of caring and self-evident indifference shown on a regular basis. They will always say that EVERYONE sees this and it is only the rose-coloured glass wearing AKBs that fail to appreciate their wisdom.
Wenger, on the other hand, takes a one day at a time approach to all setbacks and losses. This is what most ordinary people do when faced with disappointment and difficulties.
As my former referee mentor once told me, tomorrow is a new day. I once had a real stinker of a game and was ready to throw in the towel but he advised me to forget that nightmare and ensure that my next game was more positively memorable. The next game I did was one of my best and what I didn’t know (but he did) was that the NASL assessor was there watching me. When the assessor walked into the officials’ dressing room and told me he was nominating me for the NASL, I was very pleased that my mentor had tricked me, so to speak.
One never knows what can happen the next day and despite the aaa and media mugs using their crystal balls to predict disaster for the Arsenal, as Gooners we all know that things can change quickly and the most unpredictable success can happen despite appearances to the contrary.
Will we overcome a two goal deficit in the CL away to Monaco? Who knows BUT to state definitively that our CL adventure is over is presumptuous, arrogant and displays a depth of ignorance about AFC that even a Spud does not share. Stranger things have happened and we still have the league, the FA Cup and a CL spot to play for.
I, like my colleagues on UA, will take the Arsenal one day at a time….and leave the doom mongers to their nefarious passtimes. Afterall that is why the EPL plays 38 league games and why there are group stages in most Cup competitions….it takes 38 games to win the title and about 10- 12 or so to win the CL or FA Cup. One daya t a time lads and lassies…ONE daya t a time!
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The books
- Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
- Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
- The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal
Every leader no matter how popular thay are at the start become less popular as time goes by. People get bored of listening to the same voice and seeing the same face.
What’s happened to Wenger is no different to what’s happened to lots of other people in management positions for long periods of time.
I think in reality the press and the fans have been incredibly patient with a reasonbly successful manager and it’s not been as bad or tough as some people think.
Reasonably successful?
There isn’t another manager in Arsenal’s history who can compare. There are very few managers outside of Arsenal who can compare.
The AAA fans are glory hunters. They care only for the bragging rights they think they’re entitled to when Arsenal win trophies. The media only care for the next story.
thanks for this article, it’s so comforting to read you guys and understand that smart, reasonable gooners are still the majority 🙂
this was particularly interesting to me, as I’ve had my first crack at writing a piece on my beloved Arsenal on my blog (which is new and not entirely Arsenal related) and I mostly got good feedback on it. but there was one particular guy who was just unbelievably idiotic and insulting. I can understand people disagreeing with my pov, that’s fine, but that guy… anyway, even if I ignored him, it still bugged me realizing how people can produce so much bile… so, one day at a time, today I read this article and it restored my faith in humanity, the panda bears and the good, smart gooners 🙂
You are right zoon.
Wishing him deadly and painful diseases is not that bad…
Wishing him to being shot is not that bad…
Calling him a “p******le” is not that bad….
Calling him c*nt is what we all like to be called and so is not that bad…
Especially when all this is being said by our own “supporters”….
I have learned that people can only be a sum of their experiences and their learning. We are all in different stages of being, thus it is a wonder to me sometimes that we even begin to understand each other at all.
//
I honestly sense good things for Arsenal this season, it may not look a sure thing, but how many times a “sure thing” fails and a “nobody” takes the place?
We are playing much better and i’m sure that the lads and AW are prepared for Manu. This they all know will be a stern test. No doubt Fellani starts.
But i have the feeling we are going to win this one.
How many times do you need to reference a previously unknown species of Arsenal supporter to make your point?
I get it: there’s an enemy with and PM is their leader.
Please collect your Nectar points at the checkout.
Should have been: enemy within.
You’re talking about a snall minority of people that say and do those things Walter.
We have people being beheaded in the world these days on video so taking the edges of society as the norm is not really a valid position to take as reality.
Most of the Arsenal fans have been very fair to Arsene.
hahahahahahahahahahah…..
Apparently, If Mr Wenger gets his face and voice changed, they’ll be happy.
What a bag full of shit….
‘a depth of ignorance about AFC that even a Spud does not share’
Haha 🙂 Made my boring day better. Good read as ever.
[Apologies for the length of this post. It’s far too long and also focuses on finances more than will be many’s cup of tea. Only excuse i can offer is that something I read yesterday inspired me a lot, and that I hope I can convey something of it that will be useful for anyone who spends a lot of time thinking about, and wanting to crush, the arguments ranged against the manager most of us have the utmost respect for]
I was reading a critique on modern (the last decade) football last night, (Universality : the blueprint for soccer’s new era. Well worth downloading the free sample for anyone who wants to see the non-vitriolic critique of how Wenger has apparently failed in the last decade) which happened to have a big section about Arsenal in it.
The author fell into the ‘high praise for Wenger up to Invincibles; tale of decline and managerial mistakes since’ camp. It was more than averagely interesting on account of how well it illustrated what you have to do to subscribe to that- you have to downplay the influence of finances, a lot. You have to pretend Wenger, Ferguson, Mourinho and the others had, more or less, the exact same budgets.
The pattern the author followed was : praise him for superb work in the first half, mention that financial constraints were then put upon the manager at a time when our biggest rivals stretched ahead of us financially and were joined by new super wealthy rivals; then proceed to analyse our performance at length, with absolutely no reference to the financial situation.
His belief was that Wenger was wrong to abandon the things that had brought him success, in particular the physical strength we had to go with the playing ability. Basically saying we should have signed a new Viera, a new Campbell, a new Bergkamp, Henry,etc.
Many fans voice these views, including, at various points, and with a lot of qualifications, myself. But how the hell does that work… unless you ignore the financial element? The cry is for a new Viera, only much much cheaper than such a player would cost (because we could not afford it)
Seeing the argument laid out like that made me recognise the full absurdity of it- Viera, Petit, Gilberto Silva, but on the cheap *, is…not a thing. If you mean someone who matches the physical strength, with drastically reduced football ability, there is absolutely no reason to believe a team built on those lines would have outperformed the results Wenger produced in the straightened years, and every reason to believe performances would be worse (how do the teams who concentrate on physicality and aggression, with a bit of footballing ability and extra class shoehorned in if there’s any money left, tend to do in the league? Not better than us and not better than fourth is the answer.)
That, in my opinion, is the explanation for ‘abandoning’ what worked- trying to follow it, with particular emphasis on maintaining the size and strength of the players, but on a budget, would have resulted in a team who had a worse chance of CL qualification during those years.
I believe every vociferous critic of Wenger will, if challenged on whatever their original outburst was about, refer you not to our performance in the new period, but to the whole period since 2005; and every one will either ignore finances entirely, or mention them at the start, but then perform an analysis and draw conclusions which ignore finances almost entirely.
Find an Arsenal fan, or anyone else from the football community, who gives full and appropriate weighting to the impact of finances in football, and you will have a person who, at the most, thinks maybe, who knows, someone else could have done a better job. And in no time at all, after a little more thought, they’ll sound even less certain than that.
Would I accept 7 or 8 years of no trophies and no higher than 3rd if we were in the same financial position relative to our rivals as we are now and have been for less than two years? Nope, no chance, but nor is there any chance such a thing could happen under a manager as good as Wenger
* as it happens he did do a wonderful job of identifying a Viera on the cheap, but one of the brainless idiots this country specialises in wrecked that for us.
The media would have been over the moon if Harry Redknapp or any English Manager was in Wenger’s Shoes. I can’t remember any of them criticise Redknapp with the poor job he did at QPR, but because Wenger is French, he becomes an easy target for all
This is my first comment on untold, although i have followed the site for about 3years. What i want to point out is that the most attractive part of arsenal is z brand of football nd philosophy zat wenger follows. Dont easily forget zat arsenal become a global brand footbll by our great manager. Doesnt mean i agree wiz everthing zat he does but hes building a team zat will last. wait until next year.
What seems to be missing is a basic understanding of humanity in the comments of many of the vitriolic detractors of Mr. Wenger and the team. Our players and our manager are human beings, not gods, not devils. Whereas Arsenal have accomplished great things over the last two decades, the words of the worst attackers forget that these monuments to our club have been erected by humans and to treat them as more or less detracts from the magnificence of their efforts and works. Arsene Wenger appreciates and lauds the humanity of his players; he treats the players with the dignity and guides them as a mentor. Understanding the players’ human-ness means acknowledging their strengths and developing them and accepting their frailties and working forward to minimize their affects.
Rich,
you should have posted that comment behind one of the next articles 😉 Loved it!
When we think of ‘game 50’ We think of ‘Riley’.
When we think of Riley, we think of the corruption of the ‘closed shop’ which he controls.
I have a friend who owns what you British would call a corner store. He sells groceries, Deli meats, Canned goods, and various other sundries. His father started the place when I was a kid about 50 years ago. His father put 3 children through college working that store. My pal is not getting rich. He told me that he is worried about finding the money to send his only child to college. He is eking out a living. Why is that, You stupid fucking AAA morons. Because the the playing field has changed. Big chain supermarkets moved in and took a lot of business away from him. You can’t expect a mom and pop store to compete with big companies with billions of dollars behind them. You AAA assholes are too fucking dense to get it, Like my friend is finding out, the playing field isn’t level. You can’t expect a team like the Arsenal to match teams with petro-dollars behind them. The AAA morons are just to stupid to see how Wenger kept the Arsenal competitive and consistently in the Champions League. Those AAA dickheads will never understand, All they do is whine about is the lack of trophies. They are going through life with blinders on.
No Wenger is not a devil and neither are the players but the current new media world we live in gives lots of people oxygen to attack people.
Wenger and the players deserve respect and i am against abusing them. The reality is though if you show an opinion on this site that is not agreed with you’re verbally abused by many without anybody defending you that is the world we currently live in.
Wenger is a professional and managing one of the biggest football clubs in the world and people will judge him and his performance that is normal. In the most part i think it’s done within the correct boundaries but some people will always step over the line.
Great article. The AAA live in a world of confirmational bias, every bad performance confirms their negative view of the world, even if it only happens once in a while, and that in reality, spathe state of the club and team is actually healthy. Some of them are just glory hunters, some are Utd/Chelsea/ Spuds in disguise, but others are clearly locked in a bad place, such people can at times need medication, CBT, and the gift of perspective to get out of the hole in which they find themselves….they need a one day at a time philosophy. If they are in a bad place in some aspect of their lives…..taking it out on Giroud or Wenger is not going to help them. You only have to look at Claude on Arsenal TV, the aaa say he is passionate, one look at the guy and you can see he needs help, a lot of help.
Great post Rich. As wenger often says, where exactly is the next Vieira? Yes he could have gone for big strong cloggers as the aaa have suggested, yes, the likes of shawcross or samba may have prevented some of the goals we at times let in, but as you point out, would such players in anyway improve this team? Plus, wenger has seen what these cloggers, aided and abetted by the media/pgmol have done to his own players, not surprising wenger goes nowhere near this type of Orc, sorry player.
Mainly this article reminded me of the horror of that dreadful Lena Martell song. After I read this piece I still couldn’t shake that tune from my mind. I remedied it by listening to some Propaganda.
Walter, thanks (and your later article was probably even more suitable as a place to get some of that off my chest)
When you add Coquelin and Frimpong to Diaby and Song, it becomes much easier to understand the idea has always been there to try get the right blend of power and skill, attack and defence; but on a budget you are that much more exposed to unpleasant twists of fate- in this case dire injury problems for two, Song never quite sticking to the programme, and Coquelin having niggles and setbacks along the way before finally it all clicked for him in wonderful fashion.
Mandy Dodd- I already tended to have a lot of time for your views, but since that admission of yours about conditions on the home front (two who are ready for Arsene to go!) you’ve now been upgraded into the hero category. (must be invaluable for the debating skills)
Nice article Don , a very big like from me . Very fine comments from the faithful as well as the usual and very easily ignorable snortings from ‘them’ .
http://www.gocomics.com/wumo/2015/03/06
An speaking of anal retentive persons ( we were weren’t we ?), I received a clip showing a Malaysian doctor removing a hair(?) spray can from the anus of a man , but am not able to trace it and put it on here .
Strange ? Not so as this following article shows ; as well as when a patient had a small vibrator remove from his anus when I was an intern 30 years ago ! His excuse ? He was constipated and a ‘friend’ told him that this ought to do the trick !
Without much ado …..
WARNING !! STOP EATING ,DRINKING , DRIVING OR OPERATING HEAVY VEHICLES OR MACHINERY !!!!
http://www.oddee.com/item_98446.aspx
While on the subject of arses ,here’s how not to be mistaken for one …
http://faadooindia.com/2013/08/wrong-way-to-carry-your-neck-pillow/