“Arsenal have the most insufferable fans in football”

 

 

• Is watching Arsenal like having your eyes descaled by a wire brush?
• “One step further in every competition”

By Tony Attwood

My headline above is not a 100% accurate reporting of what was written by George Chester­ton, who is described as a “Senior Fea­tures Writer”  What he actually wrote was “I am an Arsenal supporter and we have the most insufferable fans in football.”  And let’s be clear, he cites no research, and just as that statement is proffered with no evidence, so is his whole anti-Arsenal article.

The article turns up in the Telegraph newspaper and thus hides behind a paywall.  However, it is also available on Press Reader so you can read it without taking out a subscription.  And the theme is clear from this sentence….

“From embar­rass­ing tifos to the ground-break­ing Arsenal Fans TV, Arsenal sup­port­ers are increas­ingly regarded as undig­ni­fied weirdos.”   No evidence is provided to back up such a wide-ranging claim, but as a lifelong Arsenal supporter, I take it personally.   So, it is me against George Chesterton; “a senior features writer and columnist with a special interest in politics and history.”   

As it happens, I also have a research degree in psychology, so when he writes about “over-cel­eb­rat­ing,” and “the panic attacks over every dropped point in the Premier League” and then again “unfoun­ded con­spir­acy the­or­ies” which make Arsenal fans  “flat Earthers,” I’ve got a bit of academic background to help me as I approach his work.

And his starting point is interesting, because the issue with Flat Earthers is that they take the everyday observation that the Earth appears to be flat and then say, “because that is what I see, that is what it is”.   This of course, is the exact opposite of the conspiracy theory which, in essence, is hidden and not available to public enquiry.

So the very essence of the notion here is confused, and it is an important point, because conspiracy theories are in essence themselves confused, because they rest on the notion of a secret cabal doing something in secret, which somehow the reporter has found out about and can see.

Interestingly, this writer does not then explain his view that us Arsenal supporters are engaged in a conspiracy theory – which makes the writer’s view a conspiracy in itself.   But he accuses Arteta of “turn­ing the club into the foot­ball equi­val­ent of a teen­age hypo­chon­driac.”   (Although the writer then says he is a lapsed Arsenal supporter, suggesting that he doesn’t actually go to games any more – which throws quite a bit of doubt into his “analysis” – I use the word lightly – of the current situation.)

Now the point about this commentary is how the club is per­ceived by Arsenal supporters and the media.   And the evidence of this is the fact that a “Spurs sea­son ticket-hold­ing friend said to me: ‘Arsenal fans of old are fine, it’s the new lot who are —–‘.”

So that’s it: the blame is very much placed on Arteta who has an approach that adopts, “the idea from oth­ers such as Liv­er­pool or Barcelona, that Arsenal are imbued with a higher pur­pose.”  It is he says a view that, “right-think­ing people find absurd, has crept into Arsenal’s self-image. The his­tor­ical reas­ons that gave Liv­er­pool and Bar­celona their sense of excep­tion­al­ism simply do not exist in north Lon­don.”

And my instant response is, beware anyone who claims to know what “right-thinking people” actually think.

Now what right-thinking people think, is not explained except that the author does suggest that the “little can­non unveiled for the Cham­pi­ons League semi-final against Paris Stger­main last sea­son” was some sort of cultural error.   As apparently is the anthem “North Lon­don Forever”.

And we then see the theme evolving – “North London Forever” is naff, seemingly because he says so.   So no mention of the fact that it was written by an actual north Londoner, about the streets around his home, and was immediately picked up those of us who have lived in north London, and linked to the club, whose senior operatives also loved the way us fans had already picked up on it.

As one born and brought up in north London, who moved back there as soon as I could after my sojourn away in the land of higher education, I loved the song from the moment I first heard it.  And even now, having moved out of north London, I still sing it.

But to George Chester­ton, “It feels inau­thentic because it is.”   No it isn’t.  It is Chesterton who lacks all authenticity.   Indeed, I doubt he has even listened to the whole song – which does reflect the north London that people not living on the salary of newspaper journalists and not having anything like the cash to put down for a mortgage, can experience.

“The sad thing is Arsenal have a his­tory of their own, but act as if they want some­body else’s,” he writes, which is one of the daftest lines I’ve ever read.   I have devoted years of my life researching Arsenal’s history, liaising with the club and writing about the history on the Arsenal History Society blog (which is currently covering the 100 successive years in the top division in case you are interested).  Each week I get emails from people wanting to explore some essence of Arsenal’s history – although interestingly never once from this writer.

He goes on, “It does not help that Arsenal are the world centre of parvenu sup­port­ers, whether that be inter­na­tional tour­ists or – even worse – the north Lon­don knownoth­ings who took an interest in the beau­ti­ful game in middle age because their son-in-law talked about it over the quinoa salad one Sunday after­noon.”

So what – we have new supporters as well as old timers like me.   I have been going to Arsenal since around 1957, and as you can tell from that I am now very old.   For much or that time I’ve had a season ticket, both at Highbury, and at the current stadium.   And if I want to give another push to my credentials, I came up with the idea for the statues around the ground and set out the description of how the first one (Chapman) should look.   Ivan Gazidis was incredibly kind and generous in his response and made sure the statue looked exactly as I suggested.

Thus the writer condemns the current Arsenal approach as being one of childishness, and I have to say I have never once, in going to Arsenal since around 1957 when I was a child, felt that.

Are Arsenal mocked by fans of other clubs as he suggests?   Yes of course we are, largely because we have a deeper and longer cultural and football history than others have.  It is a history that has been nurtured and cherished by the fans, and quite often we’ve suggested to the club what to do.  After all, it was fans who told Arsenal to adopt “North London Forever” because we felt it was relevant to us.

The writer then asserts (again with no evidence personal or cultural) that there is now a new fandom at Arsenal, which somehow replaces fandom like mine, which started with my grandfather (now long deceased) and my father (more recently deceased) who supported the club from the time of its move to Highbury, as a very welcome alternative to Tottenham for whom they could feel no association, for reasons you might imagine.

So to suggest that there is a new fandom and that it goes “back to the dog days of Wenger’s time, and in par­tic­u­lar the emer­gence of AFTV in 2012 as a trail­blazer of fan engage­ment” is simply misleading gibberish.  There has always been new initiatives.  Some are fan-created (especially those about Tottenham), some we put to the club and they take them up (as per my example of statues above) and some come from the club.   

But from this point, again with utterly no evidence at all, to argue that “Wenger’s period of decline up to 2018 was also when some Arsenal fans adop­ted a nar­rat­ive of injustice, the con­spir­acy that every­one was against them,” is basically nothing more than fantasy.   Of course, there were some conspiracy theorists watching Arsenal, because there are conspiracy theorists all over the place, but that does not mean such people were dominant or had any influence. 

And the failure of the Chesterton thesis is not helped by suggesting that a comment from the Arsenal manager that “Their best player over two legs was their goal­keeper” is some sort of conspiracy theory.   If that is a conspiracy theory then virtually every single manager in the entire Football League is a conspiracy theorist.  

Or consider this: “Arteta is the Linkedin man­ager, like a more hand­some Span­ish ver­sion of Jake Humphrey.”   Really?

Then we move on to the psycho-drama and we get, “Arsenal have fin­ished second in the league for the past three sea­sons and this is the biggest source of para­noia. The irony is they are not bot­tlers. They did not come second in the league because they were weak; they came second because they were the second-best team.”

Now wait a sec.  Is he saying that lots of Arsenal supporters believe that Arsenal came second because of some conspiracy theory?   Really?    I must say, in going to virtually every home game across the three seasons in which we came second, I never heard anyone talk about that conspiracy theory apart from one guy who was quite clearly drunk.  And because of the long journeys I made over those seasons to get to Arsenal, I would often arrive an hour, sometimes 90 minutes before kick-off, and would go into the ground, get a drink and talk to whoever was sitting or standing near me.  I met many different people from different places with different stories, but I never heard that one.

But of course, this is a rant, and like all rants it is rather short on sources.

We live in a free country which means people can write what they like as long as no one is libelled – and as a writer myself I value that.  But sometimes I read such mindless tripe that even I, as the author of some 80 books or so, really wonder if this freedom of expression hasn’t taken us into a wasteland from which we’ll never escape.

The fact is, it is articles like that by George Chester­ton which causes the problem.   Anyone who goes to watch Arsenal regularly knows what he says is not based on reality, but those who don’t go might accept it as the truth, and so a new set of rumours and stories about Arsenal take hold.   Sadly, it was ever thus.