John Evans
So far this season I have tried to give the team the benefit of the doubt. I have seen improvement earlier on this campaign as every time in the first two thirds of the season we have had a poor result we did seem to come back with a run of stronger performances. I had hoped that we had learnt from our mistakes in previous campaigns and would go onto better things in the final third of the season. I felt quietly confident that we would end our trophyless spell and go on to bigger and better things. This has proved to be a false hope and in my eyes Project Wenger has now been given every chance.
The reality of the situation is we have not moved on at all. The current playing squad has had ample opportunities to show signs of progression and has come up short every single time the opportunity of success has become a possibility. Birmingham in the Carling Cup final showed this point up in flashing neon lights for all to see and the failures against Sunderland, WBA and Blackburn in the recent Premier League games for me have been too much to take. These three teams are very poor and other sides in the Premier League brush them all aside with ease. Look at the City result yesterday for proof of this fact. They beat Sunderland in a stroll 5-0 whereas we failed to break them down once in 90 minutes of play only a couple of weeks prior to this. Blackburn have been shipping goals away from home at an alarming rate all season long, yet under pressure to do so can we manage one goal against them? Of course we can’t and apparently the reason for this latest failure was the international break. What was the reason put forward for the WBA failure? A poor pitch. What was the reason for the Sunderland failure? The referee making mistakes. The truth is we could not have had an easier run of games at such a crucial time of the campaign and we have blown it big time. It is the same season in season out. It is not bad luck and it has nothing at all to do with pitch surfaces or refereeing decisions.
The current playing squad is not one that is capable of lifting the trophies that count and it has indeed proven this season that it is not one that can lift any trophy full stop. I couldn’t give a toss about the Carling Cup but we have dropped so far now that I really wanted to win it this season as soon as we beat Spurs in the first round and a few of the big boys went out early doors. Could we manage it? No we couldn’t. We managed to fall over ourselves to lose when in fairness we didn’t have much to beat. That is a tell tale sign of a playing squad that are a bunch of losers. When victory is almost given to them on a plate they will find a way to lose it. Look at Man United and you see the complete opposite of this. 2-0 down at West Ham on Saturday at half-time and they came roaring back in the final 45 minutes to win the game 4-2. A sign of real winners and a sign of a team that deserves to be crowned as Champions come the end of May. They possess powers that as a club we do not and that is why they regularly win the trophies that we can only dream of winning these days. If we were 2-0 down at West Ham in the same circumstances on Saturday there is no way on earth that we are coming back and winning the game 4-2. It is that simple and that is why we will be trophyless again at the end of this campaign.
I have lost all faith in the current playing squad and the man at the helm of our club in the last month or so. I tried to stay positive and have given them one last chance to prove the doubters wrong but the same things have happened all over again and it goes beyond the point of feeling slightly disappointed. It is depressing stuff to be an Arsenal fan at the moment. I don’t like the way our club is now being run and I don’t like the complete apathy shown towards us the fans these days. ‘If you don’t like it, we have thousands of others wishing to take your seat in the ground so like it or lump it’ is the real message coming out of the club these days. Well my message back is try and get some other mug to part with thousands of pounds per season because I for one have had enough. I resent paying anything towards a club that doesn’t give a toss about my views or opinions. The club has been run like a small time outfit with zero ambition yet they charge us the top admission prices in Europe.
I have come to the conclusion that the best thing that could happen to our club is for them to now go on a disastrous run of results that sees them fail to qualify for the Champions League next season. It may sound strange coming from an avid Arsenal fan but believe me if nothing changes soon we will be seeing more of the same stuff for some time to come yet. The only other way that I can foresee change happening is if the ground suddenly failed to sell out and season ticket holders and club level members chose en masse to not renew their tickets for next season, which judging by the comments on this very website I can’t see happening on the sort of scale that will make any difference to the club we choose to support.
Most season ticket holders seem to feel like if they choose not to renew then they will miss the chance of a season ticket in the future. This may be wide of the mark as for sure we do have a waiting list as things stand but can we really see that remaining to be the case after another two or three seasons of this? I am personally so perplexed with the state of play at our club that I have cancelled my Sky Sports subscription. I can’t be arsed with the same old sh*t all the time, watching games like the Birmingham, WBA, Sunderland and Blackburn ones does nothing to enhance my life. It merely hinders it. I am always in a more negative mood after the game than I was before it so why bother watching?
Until we get a real shift of power at the end of the club that really matters then nothing will change. When AW took over all those years ago the game was a different one to the one we see before our eyes today. If we finished above United come May we won the league, it was that simple, there were no other teams who could compete on our level over the course of a season. Now we have Chelsea, Spurs, City and Liverpool as well as United who are all well capable of finishing the season with more points than us when things kick off at the start of August. Therefore as a club we need to show greater ambition than we were showing ten years ago, not less. When you factor in the backline that AW inherited which included Seaman, Dixon, Winterburn, Keown and Adams then you begin to see how with a sprinkle of players with more technical ability we became successful in the early years of the Wenger reign. He inherited a winning mentality. An English winning mentality, the sort of mentality that hates to lose, a mentality that drives teams on to win things. Look at the United squad of today; you have players like Scholes, Giggs, Rooney and up until recently Neville. Say what you like about them and obviously as Arsenal fans some of those names are almost figures of hate to us, but at the end of the day all of those players are United through and through and are also winners through and through that have been brought up playing under a manager that simply cannot stand losing. Even if it was a kick about in the park, Fergie would spend the rest of the weekend at home sulking if his side got beat.
Players that came to our club in the early years of the Wenger reign learnt from these English players that had been brought up in the culture of our club. The Henry’s of this world have said that exact fact in previous interviews. They trained each day with men that were Arsenal. They trained each day with Arsenal men that hated to lose and would often put their bodies on the line to avoid defeat. They learnt from these men and they improved as players because of this fact. It is a fact that since the last bunch of this type of player left our club we have won nothing. Ashley Cole, as much as we now hate him, had a point when he left for Chelsea. He didn’t like the way our club was going. It had lost its soul of Englishness and that mentality had gone, there was too much of a continental feeling around the club and the win at all cost mentality was replaced by one that was more interested in keeping your shorts clean. Sol Campbell was the last man to show this type of commitment and when he returned last season he stood out a country mile as being a guy that cared more than the players that he was on the same team as. He was a warrior in the defeat at the Lane last season and must have felt let down that he had to leave the field on the losing side as if the other ten players on his team showed the same level of effort and commitment that he had managed to show as a player that was nearing the end of his own career we would not have lost the game. Jack and TV stand out in our current squad of players as having super levels of drive and commitment yet in any other team their efforts would merely be considered the norm and that fact is nothing short of a disgrace.
We currently have a bunch of players that are in a complete and utter comfort zone. They laud it about as though they are the best thing since sliced bread but they are in fact a proven bunch of also ran’s. The sad facts are it will be more of the same next season. Most people will still fork out an average of £1200 or so and renew their season tickets. Most people will still be buying the £6 hotdogs and most people will still be queuing up to buy the new 3rd strip come August which we will wear once in a meaningless cup game in Outer Mongolia. Most if not all of the following players will still be in the Arsenal squad: Almunia, Eboue, Squillaci, Denilson, Diaby, Bendtner, Chamakh. We will probably lose Cesc for around £40m and the same old spill will be branded out by AW that we don’t need to splash the cash on a replacement as we have Ramsey and Nasri that can do a job. We will buy no more than two players over the next 12 months and come next March/April the wheels will come off all over again and AW will spout the same crap about bad luck/injuries to key men/poor referees/sh*t pitches.
I am bored sh*tless of it all and will not be parting with any money that feeds such an ambitionless regime. I will not even be bothering to renew my red level memberships as I would rather keep the £60 for something else more productive. For all those who reply to this article with sentences like why don’t you go and support Spurs etc, don’t bother applying the pressure on your finger tips in typing these words out as a response as the only response you get in turn from me is one that reads go f*** yourself you spineless, blind fools. By the way if one did go off and support Spurs instead at the very least they would be supporting a club that has shown high levels of ambition in recent times. They have come up from nowhere and are now virtually on a par with us as a club and as a squad. That is how far they have come and how far we have been allowed to fall by the wayside and that is because of the massive element within our support that will take endless sh*t from the club and keep on coming back for more season after season. To all those people that say on this very website ‘I need to renew my season ticket as if I don’t I wont get the chance again’ grow some balls, stand up for yourself and do what you believe in and throw the bloody forms in the bin where they currently belong. You get zero ambition in return and treated with utter contempt, so why bother?
We have far too many half hearted fans at the stadium anyway that are far more interested in the half time refreshments (or should that read mid-game refreshments?) than the game itself so what are you really missing out on by not attending? Or if you do after everything still feel the need to attend on a regular basis why not vent some of your frustration at the way the club is being run and actually try and let the manager and the board know your feelings? I cannot remember ever hearing true unrest at an Arsenal game, not once over the past six seasons has their been the smallest hint of the fans not being happy so why would the club then feel the need to sharpen up their act? The money keeps on coming in and the fans seem happy, so why change?
How many people reading this would be disappointed if they woke up in the morning to the news that AW has left the club and Jose Mourinho has been named as his replacement? I sure as hell wouldn’t be as the guy is a proven winner, time and time again whereas AW now for me is the opposite. You can’t live the rest of your life being praised for past glories, you have to prove yourself every season, that is how it is. Everyone could have forgiven the odd season of no success, especially granted the move to the new stadium but six in a row is too much. Especially it is too much when you factor in the chances we have glaringly let slip through our fingertips during that period of time. That for me is the real damning factor when deciding on whether a change is the best for the club we support. It isn’t the fact that we have gone six seasons without a trophy, it is the mentality that has been allowed to grow within the club that is the hardest thing to accept as a true fan. Finish in the top four and start again next season. It isn’t enough for me as fan to accept as I want the best for my club and for the amount of money it costs me to continue offering my support to the club I follow. I want ambition. That is what is currently lacking. It isn’t about the trophies as no-one can guarantee those at any club, it is about the ambition or the lack of it that hurts. We are being asked to cough up for the highest prices in Europe season after season yet we are clearly not seeing a team that harbours any ambition at all to be top dog, even in their own country let alone Europe. These two factors do not tally up to anything resembling value for money so I choose not to attend. For me it really is that simple.
