Losing a match badly in the early days of the sseason

 

 

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By Toy Attwood

I haven’t gone back and checked, but I think it was in the first double season that quite early on we had a couple of bad results and people started saying at once that Arsenal had flattered to deceive and were clearly going nowhere.

But whether I have got that ancient memory right or not, the fact is that one great result doesn’t mean we are going to win the league any more than one unexpectedly poor result means we are going to finish up mid-table or worse.

The fact is that the key issue is how the club and the players respond to each event, and to the management.  It matters that they don’t get carried away by the victories and don’t get depressed by the defeats.  What happens in the next game is what matters.

There clearly are some poor teams around in the Premier League at the moment who are really not going anywhere; there are others that we don’t know enough about to make a judgement on.   how But what matters is what Arsenal now do in response to the bad defeat they have just had, and we help them in this by showing that our support isn’t affected.

I suspect our current manager is a master of re-energising the team, and has an excellent understanding of what it is like to lose unexpectedly as much as to win outrageously.  I also suspect he has been at the club long enough and knows the players well enough to be able to put that knowledge to good use when they next get together and start work on putting to rights everything that went wrong today.

One defeat does not end a season, unless the club and the players allow it to happen and the supporters give up supporting.   Certainly I know that the Arsenal fan base – the real Arsenal fan base, not the fantasy fan base that are swayed by the media and don’t get to matches – will respond and stay with the players and the club.  And that is part of the strength of Arsenal.

Being negative about Arsenal and the players never helped anyone at all.   Showing our support no matter what is what Arsenal is about.   We have a manager who has just delivered the league title.  One defeat doesn’t change that.

I think also that some of the younger players will be quite shocked that such a defeat could happen to Arsenal, and will be waiting to see how the older players and the management respond.   My view is that Arsenal, the players and the club will pick themselves up, as will the supporters who stay with the club no matter what, and we can move forward again.

That is what The Arsenal is all about.

Indeed, that is what Arsenal do – that is how we have gone on and won things in the past and will win trophies again.   Supporters have a part to play as much as the team and the management.

I know from past situations there sill be some (probably not Untold readers, but some) who will take this one game as proof that he squad is not good enough and will demand wholesale changes.   To my mind, that is exactly the response that our opponents will want and will relish.

Yes, some changes may be needed, and some faults may well have come to the fore in today’s defeat, but that most certainly does not mean giving up supporting the club.

Members of my family saw the Arsenal team of the 1930s and others the disasters of the late 1950s and some of the 1960s.   But we stay with Arsenal because that is our team and part of our heritage.

Had we won it would have been an eighth straight victory and the best start to any campaign in over 120 years.    So it wasn’t to be, but all that means is that the players and management need to pull themselves back together, and we need to do our part too.