By Tony Attwood
As you may know, there has been a long term link between Untold Arsenal and the official Arsenal Belgium supporters club. Our good friend and regular correspondent Walter Broeckx has been associated with the Belgium group since its foundation, and as a referee himself has often written on Untold Arsenal on matters relating to refereeing both in England and in Belgium as well as undertaking vast numbers of post-match reviews.
Indeed whenever the Belgium group come over for a game, there is a regular get-together at our local watering hole, which always livens up the pre-match experience for all of us.
Arsenal Belgium has now put out a statement, and I thought it was worth publishing here…
The board of the official Arsenal Belgium supporters club is gutted by the recent events surrounding our captain Granit Xhaka.
We want to distance ourselves from the toxic atmosphere created by some groups of fans with a camera or bloggers.
We can all have an opinion about players and coaches but this should never result in personal abuse.
What is completely unacceptable is that this leads to personal insults or even worse like wishing diseases or death threats upon the players, their family or children.
Indeed we have noticed that some groups of fans with a video camera and some bloggers have been creating a negative atmosphere around the club for some 10 years. The only result is that we are considered bad supporters by supporters from other clubs.
The board of Arsenal Belgium wants to appeal to all Arsenal SUPPORTERS to do their job and that is to support the players out there on the field. We can take a lesson from supporters from other clubs who hardly win anything but never fall so low that they threaten or humiliate their own players.
Let us turn the page and let us go into the stadium and support each player (whether you like him personally or not) so that they can feel us standing behind them.
When the supporters start fighting the players and the players start fighting the supporters, there will be only one loser: Arsenal FC!
So let us get behind the team! Let us get behind the players! And most of all: support the club. Don’t fight the club or act in any way that can only damage the club and its results.
Let us remind ourselves of our motto: Victoria Concordia Crescit or Victory through Harmony! Let us show some Harmony! Let us support players instead of bringing them down!
COME ON YOU GUNNERS!
The Board
Arsenal Belgium
Totally agree. It is appalling that we boo players who try hard and play to their best ability.
Good job Arsenal Belgium. Please get some of the UK media to publish your response. It wont be easy but try.
The first law of football is the fans will let you know!
The critics are entitled to boo poor performances.
If you force a crowd to support under par football,you will soon have no supporters!
On the other hand personal abuse on media and threats to ones family are despicable .
So yes we must get behind the players! And they have to step up to the plate,and learn from their mistakes.
Unfortunately xhaka and mustafi seem to struggle with that.
I would sell them both personally.
Thank you so much for that. I totally agree on what you are saying! We need to support the team in a way which improves the team.
funny a thing,i see Arsenal supporters booing their ex-players who played for other clubs,that’s a wrong attitude.let the club unite as it used to be
Brilliant.
I have to confess It took me a while and several visits to Untold to really get it about negativity. i.e. More Negativity cannot reduce existing negativity. I am not against criticism per se but if we keep going off on the players in this way then the only thing left to cheer would be “Gwendouzi rugby tackling Zaha”
Surely we all agree….. (-100) + (-200) = -300. More negativity will only increase existing negativity.
Only positivity can reduce negativity. And this is true for almost every aspect of life. Yet when it comes to football we somehow think our noxious vitriolic venom will solve improve a “situation”. And if I might add a “situation” which we have allowed others to define for us just 10 games into the season. We have somehow fallen into the trap of believing we are in a crisis and we desperately need the help of the “Messiah”……
A coalition led by sections of the media have proceeded to appoint/anoint/propose/select a “Messiah”. Articles upon articles are pouring in daily about how this “Messiah” is all knowing and will miraculously turn things around and get the best out of so and so…..
I am all for getting emotional but if we are not “emotionally intelligent” then God forbid we will eventually get the team we deserve. It may already be happening…Once we put it into their heads that one wrong pass will be met with vile abuse on the grounds and ugly threats on twitter then players would pass side to side then back to the keeper then oops…concede….More Abuse… More mistakes….
Wenger’s “secret” to keeping Arsenal in the top four despite the presence of Sugar Daddies “force feeding” our rivals….. was “belief” he knew he could not train absolutely everything into the players so they had to believe…. And what happened when the the rabid among the fans said it was all rubbish …. they got noisier and noisier and fantasized about Arsenal splashing the cash etc….They still have not got what they want.
Arsenal is an elite team with a healthy mix of talent, experience and skilled management. How many clubs out there wishing they can get hold of our players. And if we keep heightening their match-day anxiety, then the best talent to reach the first team in a decade will slip away.
Cheadle,
you touch something important imo. Believe. Is it a coincidence that the noisier the moaning became the believe of the players under Wenger went down… and we lost our position in the top4?
I think it was a one mans battle (Wenger) to instill believe only for a co-ordinated effort from the guys with the camera, some blogs and the media to drag the players and the club down. After seeing it succesful the media want to continue of course. The moaning blogs and the cameraman for a little while tried to change their attitude but in the end found it much easier to spread just more negativity.
I’m not saying all is rosy at Arsenal for the moment (the football we play is hard labour and no more “an art”) but I think that undermining the belief has a great deal to do with it.
An excellent statement in support of AFC. I totally agree with the sentiments expressed in it and urge Arsenal Belgium to get it published in the mainstream media. Of course they might not oblige you but you would have done the right thing in helping counter the negative vibes surrounding the Club at the moment.
Hopefully other support groups will demonstrate the same solidarity with the players and their coaches.
This article posting by the Belgium Arsenal supporters is very supportive to Xhaka in particular and in general is in order to be against booing and the troli of any Arsenal players in the Ems stadium and on the social media platform.
But does one thing lead to another? And do the Arsenal fans who watch the team playing in various stadia have the rights not to be disrespected by any Arsenal player, just like the Arsenal player too has the right to not be booed or be troll?
And do the Arsenal fans who are the club’s season ticket holders and those who buy their tickets outside the season ticket holder format, and also those who subscribed to a cable subscription all paying to watch Arsenal to indirectly pay for the wages of Arsenal players to a large extent have the rights to scold any Arsenal player who is no performing well on the field of play for the club whom they’ve come to watch and give their supports to? And do they have the rights to hit back at the Arsenal player they have indirectly employed and scolded for not doing his job properly but who turned around to insult them?
Well done, fine sentiments, fine words.
Sadly it wont change our pathetic fans one bit, but it’s better than nothing.
“The only result is that we are considered bad supporters by supporters from other clubs”.
A vast majority of my friends and family think Arsenal fans are mad.
I know a certain section most definitely are.
Well said Walter!
With the ridiculous media rubbish after ever game, from blogs, newspapers and pundits alike, every game is judgement day. We can reach no conclusions other than that most football commentary is of such a poor level, that it’s really not worth reading or listening to, except the odd place like here and a couple of decent writers, unfortunately very few and far between.
Three weeks back, well beyond the memory of most football journalists, Totts were in total crisis and Tino was about to get sacked. Around that time, Manure were terrible and it would take ‘2 years and 5 players’ to get them back to the top half of the table. Then Arsenal get docked 4 points by the referee and VAR and Arsenal is in crisis, Emery under threat of imminent sacking.
10 games in to the new season and every team except Liverpool might as well be fighting relegation, according to the pundits and bloggers.
After today’s round of games, who will be reported as if they are the worst team in history? Will it be United, Chelsea, Leicester?
We need to remember that there are only a tiny minority of fans who sink to the levels that some did last week. After Mustafi came out and stated that negativity of fans makes him play worse, you’d think that the fans might see that it is in our interest as a club to get behind the whole team.
With almost nothing but lies and deceit in the media and even sadly from most of the pundits, is it any wonder that England has created it’s own breed of orc-like parasitic fans? Fans that are only happy if their team wins every game every week and lifts every trophy. And if not, some of these nasty fans feel it is their god-given right to be as base and abusive as they can be.
I am glad that most Arsenal fans are great. The away fans are the best in the League and it was great to hear them in full voice at Anfield, during that spectacular match.
We are a classy team with classy supporters and we need to remember that. We have the most diverse supporter base in world football. There are a few weasels but the rest of us are okay!
Thanks Walter!
And again the rallying cry can be heard from Belgium to Bukina Faso : VICTORIA CONCORDIA CRESCIT! VICTORY GROWS FRO HARMONY!!
Sally Pally
Great post.
One point I slightly disagree is that most Arsenal fans are great. Well if by most you mean over 50% then you are probably right, but sadly the percentage that are terrible is sadly way way too high, especially given how in real terms (not the terms of the media or our entitled fans) we actually do as a club/team.
Most Arsenal fans I know socially or through work never stop moaning. A vast majority had boarded the Arsene out bus by the end. Some had started to want us to leave.
Obviously the away fans are a different breed. That is something that was the case back in the days when I followed the boys around the country.
But I can only say it as I see it, and most Arsenal fans I know…….well you get the picture.
Well said Neil fitt. I uphold the fans right to complain, especially when a captain cannot understand the sense of urgency the fans expect him to show when his team is not producing the result the fans expect. At the end of the day, like gazidis said, the club answers to the fans, even Wenger found that out eventually. If the club is not satisfied with the statement the fans are making, it has avenues to engage and come to a common ground. However it is my opinion that in recent times the club understands it has fallen short of the targets it agreed with the fans, hence the club has not been in a strong position to call the fans to order.
PS: this is a personal opinion. Please no need for abuse
I agree whole heartedly with the views of Arsenal Belgium , and the other true fans . Let is get behind the team and support them as best as we can. Another change of personel , may not get the intended result.
So swollow all that bile and support the team that you love. Sing your hearts out for our players , and ignore the moronic pundits , stupid journos as well as those Youtube idiots.
Up the Gunners !
I am a non Arsenal supporter but I find it amazing that you have supporters who would behave in such a negative fashion.
I also realise that there a lot of “pundits” who as failed managers think the job of coaching a football team is easy. They show a total lack of knowledge and intelligence every time they open their mouths. If people cannot see that a lot of this is speculation at best, at worst lies, then they must be incredibly gullible.
I think the treatment of Xhaka is unbeleivably bad.