John Evans
It has been a very tough time to be an Arsenal fan over the past few months. We have seen disappointment after disappointment and there wouldn’t be many amongst us who are not looking forward to this current campaign coming to an end sooner rather than later. It is fair to say that we have not moved on as a club this season. Some may argue the toss on whether or not we have moved backwards and there could indeed be a case made for this to be true, but in reality we are pretty much where we were 12 months ago as far as the on- field element of our club lies.
As a football fan you have to accept that at certain times of the season your team will leave you feeling let down and disappointed as losses are as much a part of being a football fan as wins are. In my opinion, the real reason why so many Arsenal fans have got so fed up this season is not because of the lack of trophies. We have now gone six years without a major trophy arriving, so there isn’t anything new with us coming to May and ending up empty-handed. The real source of frustration has been the realisation of just how far we, as fans, currently feel from the club that we have supported for so long.
How can we get excited about watching the likes of Fabregas and Nasri when you know that within a year or two they will no longer be at the club? How can we get excited about watching certain players pull on the shirt on a regular basis that we all know are well short of the required level to make us successful? How can we get excited about our team scoring a goal when we know from previous experience that one will go in at the other end normally by the time we have re-taken our seats? How do we feel when many of us are struggling to pay our bills as it is and we get asked to pay another 6.5% for our season tickets? Or another 50% to renew our silver memberships? How can this be fair when we know our best player has already been sold and that the money gained from this sale will not be re-invested in full?
As Arsenal fans we are told to pay the highest ticket prices in the country yet at the same time we are being told not to expect trophies as other clubs spend more money on players than us. This is the root cause of all the recent frustrations within our fan base. It is not that people are spitting their dummies out at the fact that we haven’t lifted a trophy for six years. It is the realisation that we are being lied to and basically having the pi*s taken out of us by the very club we all support. Dare to question the way the club is being run and you are written off as silly by the chairman of the club. Where else does this happen? Some articles on this very website have recently suggested that we should put it all in perspective and look at clubs like West Ham to realise that our problems are not all that bad in comparison. To be fair, we don’t start off the season with the same ambitions as the Hammers, do we? If they avoid relegation, it has been a good season. What constitutes a good season for us as a club? Champions League qualification? If that is all the club aim for every season then that is fine, but would we then feel the need to pay out an average of £1200 on our season tickets every season if that is as far as we are ever going to go as a club?
When I was a youngster, I hoped for titles to come our way. After the League Cup success of 1987, the Championship was finally ours in 1989 and 1991. We won a domestic cup double in 1993 and the Cup Winners Cup in 1994. We also got to the final of the League Cup in 1988 and the final of the Cup Winners Cup in 1995. We are not a small time club and haven’t been for as long as you could care to remember. A long time before AW took over, we were winning trophies and were competitive virtually every season. Why should we now accept less ambition from the club we support just at the very time when we need to be showing greater ambition than we ever have done previously?
We are now being told by no less than our clubs manager that second is not a failure and we should, as a club, accept this level of ‘success’ for the next 20 years. Instead of looking to teams like United, Chelsea and City and aiming high, we are told to count ourselves lucky and to look at teams like Wigan and West Ham etc. I am sorry, but that is just not good enough when you support a club with the history and traditions of Arsenal Football Club.
The new motto for next season is ‘Forward’. How much of a contradiction is that term when you look at the recent quotes coming out of our club? We are fooled into celebrating a 125th anniversary, but in reality it is just an excuse to bring out yet another ‘new’ home strip for next season when we have just bought the latest ‘new’ one last August. Season ticket prices go up by 6.5% just at the time when you would have questioned renewing them at the old prices. Membership renewals go up by around 50% for next season - why? What is the reasoning behind these increases considering the current economic state that the country is in? The truth is we as fans are getting royally ripped off and we are just starting to wake up to this fact.
We were told we would be able to compete with the very best teams in Europe after moving to the new stadium. We were told we had a young team full of players that would blossom over the coming years given the chance to prove themselves every week. We have waited and we have waited and we have waited even longer still. Now six years on, we are just beginning to realise what a complete load of bollocks it has all been. The people that fed us these lies have sold their shares in the club for massive profits and fu*ked off over the horizon whilst we the fans are left behind to pay even more money in to the coffers of the club safe in the knowledge that none of it will be used to strengthen the playing squad. I, for one, do not have any interest in paying around £60 a game to watch the likes of Barry Bendtner smirk when they miss yet another glaring opportunity in front of goal. I have had enough of seeing the likes of Clichy slip up at a crucial time to concede yet another glaringly avoidable goal. We waited with baited breath to see who the club would sign to replace Adebayor and Toure. After nearly two years, they come up with Chamakh on a free and Squillaci for around £6m. That in my eyes is a complete pi*s take when you are being asked to pay the highest season ticket prices in the country, if not the world. It just isn’t good enough to keep the interest levels going and that is where we are currently at.
I feel like there are two core areas in which we need to improve on regardless of all the above. We currently have far too many players that are being asked to regularly play out of their favoured position. Bendtner on the wing is beyond a joke. Theo, as a right winger, just does not work as his delivery has improved, but it is still nowhere near consistent enough. Both of the above mentioned players need to either be played upfront as strikers or sold. Samir would prefer to play in Cesc’s role, but even in his absence he does not get the chance to play there. The same can be said of Arshavin. Yes - he is a lazy so-and-so, but when you look at the guy’s stats, he outperforms virtually every other Arsenal player time and time again even with 25% effort. Jack surely needs to play in a more forward role to be seen at his very best over the coming years. RVP for me is not an out and out striker. He needs a target man to feed off - ideally someone with the pace to get in behind the opposing back four (Theo anyone?).
The other core area where we are going wrong besides the obvious much needed change of personnel is the style of play we adopt. It simply is far too intricate and all of our main men need to be somewhere near the very top of their games for it to have any chance of coming off. This is what is contributing to us dropping silly points on a regular basis against teams of vastly inferior footballing abilities. We pass and we pass and we pass the ball some more - one touch and two touch and we move and we move and we end up where we started off from after 30 passes on a regular basis. We need to pass through the eye of a needle to get an opportunity to shoot at goal where as the opposition simply play for free-kicks against us and bang we are 1-0 down. It isn’t bad luck, guys. It is inept tactics and the manager needs to realise this very quickly now or leave. It only takes one or two of our main men to be 10-20% down on their top ‘A games’ and we are in trouble. Don’t get me wrong, it does look great when it comes off as it did against Barcelona at home and in the second half against Chelsea at home and to be fair even in the 0-0 at home to City. But how often does it work? How often does it leave us feeling so frustrated? If we adopted a slightly more direct and efficient style of play than what we currently use then we would certainly win more matches as a result of the change and is that not the real aim of any football team?
I hope we see a marked improvement in the overriding ambition we show as a club although to be honest I can’t see it happening until our current manager has packed his bags for good and has left the club. Maybe then we will get someone that would more resemble the 1996 version of AW rather than the 2011 version we currently have in charge of our club.
