Arsenal vs The Stone Age; this Sunday.

By Bulldog Drummond

I must admit that I have never once understood how people at Stoke City can boo Aaron Ramsey for “getting himself injured” as I have heard some of them put it.

 

It is something so incomprehensible to me that I can only continue to see those Stoke City supporters who engage in this behaviour as so utterly primitive in their thinking and behaviour that they really have not progressed since the Paleolithic Era.  I suspect that after games they go to caves and ponder once more the whole notion of rubbing sticks together to make fire.

I am of course quite sure that this is just my failing and that others more versed in understanding human behaviour than I, are able to explain how a significant number (I am sure a minority but still a significant number) of 25,000 or so home supporters continue to indulge in this behaviour.

As the Guardian said in its headline in 2010, “The ludicrous reaction to Aaron Ramsey’s injury offered yet more proof that football exists in a bizarre little bubble.”

Live TV said at the time “we’ve decided not to show you the replay because it is too distressing” although by Match of the Day they were off showing it in slow motion and the papers the next day ran through it frame by frame.

And then it started.  The defence of Ryan Shawcross, sickeningly given, day after day after day.  He was picked for England – showing me enough about England as a football team to taint my view forever more.

According to the press, Fabio Capello delayed his England squad announcement by 40 minutes to decide whether Ryan Shawcross, picked for his country for the first time, should retain his place in light of the Stoke centre-half’s horrific tackle on Arsenal’s Aaron Ramsey at the Britannia Stadium.  And then he decided he could.  So 40 minutes.  That is what a potentially career ending assault is worth.

And from then on the response was, “he’s not that kind of player!” even though he broke Francis Jeffers’s ankle in 2007; seriously injured Emmanuel Adebayor the season before he did in Ramsey, (and that was when Adebayor was actually off the pitch at the time, as was the ball).  And then a whole series of similar appalling assaults in reserve team games came to light on blog videos.

If football existed in the real world, for that kind of assault and with that kind of record you go to prison.  Indeed a week after the Shawcross outrage a Sunday league player Mark Chapman was given six months for assault when he broke a player’s leg in a Sunday League game.

And in response to all this Stoke City supporters boo Ramsey, which to me puts them totally and utterly beyond the pale of civilised society.  Of course not all of them engage in this behaviour and I am sure there are many that do not, and there are many that are disgusted by the action of fellow supporters.

But the fact is that it goes on and Stoke City has done nothing to stop it.  Show it on TV and the commentators just take it as something that happens.  And maybe that is what our world does today – there are so many atrocities and outrages that everything is just accepted as part of the show.

Except no, not for me.  Maybe I am on my own in this, but not for me.  The tackle was a disgrace in my mind and the player should have been banned for a long time, but irrespective of all that, booing Ramsey by the Stoke fans is a matter so disgraceful and disgusting that it should have been stopped even if it meant closing the ground.

I have even heard people say, “but how do you stop it?”  Well, many years ago, Arsenal fans would regularly use the word “Yid” in a song about Tottenham supporters.  And quite rightly Arsenal FC decided they had to take action.  Action was announced, and the vast majority of supporters, the people who go along because we support the team, but also try to act in a decent civilised way, supported that action.

Yes there are still a few who use that word at the end of the “What do you think of Tottenham” chant but the number is much, much smaller than before, because people in the ground felt this was taking “banter” far, far to far.  Stoke could have taken action like that, but they chose not to.  They accepted it, and thought it reasonable and acceptable and not worth doing anything serious about.  Let’s boo the guy who got his leg horrifically broken by one of our players.  Jolly good show.

That puts Stoke City outside of the bounds of decent society.  They are the club of the Stone Age.

20 Replies to “Arsenal vs The Stone Age; this Sunday.”

  1. Oh dear , here we go again obviously a very young supporter as you seem to have forgotten the animals your club once employed ! mind you i suppose you have to have someone to complain about as your shit team fails to deliver for yet another season.
    Yes the tackle was late however you have forgotten to mention the fact that Shawcross left the field in tears , he was distraught !!! however yet again ANOTHER unbalanced view of the days proceedings , grow up and move on , and on the point of a minority of Stoke fans booing Ramsey that is in response to your morons booing Shawcross , Oh and just for your information there never was 25000 fans booing Ramsey just in your tiny mind eh .

  2. Interesting article and although I and all other Arsenal supporters condone what Shawcross did, I think it is more a socity ignorance that we live in today that weaves it’s way through football.
    The hatred of Arsenal by Stoke City supporters goes back further to the 70/71 season when we beat them after a dramatic 2-2 draw at Hillsborough in the replay at Villa Park and then again beat them the following season after a replay in the semis and thus denying them a first ever Cup Final appearance(which they are still waiting for)

    )The Y word is a deragatory term to most Jewish people and there are as many Jewish supporters at Arsenal as at Spurs who were always nown as The Lillywhites decades ago when I first went to Highbury in the fifties.

  3. Speaking of the “Stone Age”, FIFA apparently demonstrated that is back firmly in “Stone Age” mode. An article at Inside World Football shows that FIFA decided to change the rules over FIFA-2026 to disadvantage Morocco.

    http://www.insideworldfootball.com/2018/03/30/exclusive-morocco-suspicion-fifas-last-minute-bid-criteria-manipulations/

    No mention of how many brown paper bags of money are to be given to FIFA executives need to be given in the article either.

    To me, it doesn’t matter if FIFA-2026 is given to Canada, Mexico and the Democratic Republic of Donald Trump. I wouldn’t be going to any games outside of Canada, and I doubt that there would be any games in Edmonton anyway.

  4. I have met people from Edmonton and thanks to you I was able to surprise them with the knowledge I have gained from you.

    As you may know there is an Edmonton in London. It was once a small town in the county of Middlesex which was swallowed up by the ever spreading city of London. The suburb serves as good catchment for Arsenal supporters plus a few for the Middlesex club the other side of Finsbury Park that hasn’t won a trophy for many a year.

  5. I’m glad you found something useful in what I’ve written.

    I once did a report on Edmonton. Edmonton derives from “Eadhelm’s Tun”, which dates back to the Domesday survey. I think a Tun is a farm. There is a tiny “Edmonton” in Kentucky (about a population of 2000?), and a suburb of Cairns, Australia is called Edmonton. In doing that report, there was a hint of an Edmonton in Slovakia or the Czech Republic? It’s hard to see how an Edmonton fits in with Slavic languages, but ….

    I guess northern Alberta (and probably the BC Peace) is mostly supporting Liverpool, I’ve no idea why. Beatles?

    Where are the spud supporters?

  6. It is heartening for me to see that two and possibly three (Palace) of the Tony Pullis infested clubs may be going down to the lower leagues . Probably never ever to rise again from those depths.

    Hopefully Ryan Shawcross will do the right and decent thing as captain and goes down with the sinking ship.

  7. Yes Chris …. once again Shawcross is painted as the victim … and another huge slice of irony sails past …

  8. Brickfields

    Was discussing Stuart Attwell’s terrible display in the Wolves/Boro game last night … turns out the Boro fans hate him as much as we do !!! Could have been watching us, Boro kicking the Wolves players to bits with no cards but when the Wolves players started returning the favour two sent off for dob;e yellows, (one of which no one could explain even from multiple camera angles) … At least Pulis is down there where he can’t do us any hard at the moment …

  9. Shawcross has crossed the line many a time despite what his apologists say.

    However, if I am not mistaken, some of the Stoke vitriol directed to Aaron Ramsey, if I am not mistaken, comes because he did not believe that Shawcross fully apologised for his tackle (sic)…which is his right.

  10. Colario

    The writer of that article has something backward. A problem with all news medja, is that the continue to publish stories about correlations between “this” and “that” as meaningful. And those stories inevitably do not look into causation. This author is talking about causation without correlation.

  11. You don’t need a typist to get you message out right . But it would help if were not laughing while typing . Took me sometime to get that one right too !

  12. The above message was for .. @ Minesy – 31/03/2018 at 11:01 am .
    Message to self – ‘Oh damn , back to more practice ! ‘

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