Liam Tulett
Arsenal Football Club seems to have become the Katie Price of the sports world over the last few months, in that - love us or loathe us - you can’t seem to be able to pick up a newspaper, turn on Sky Sports News or read any football website without reading about us. It’s a metaphor. I don’t mean that Arsène has been pictured in a bizarre falling-out of a nightclub with his wangers out. Some is positive, but recently a lot of it seems to have been greatly overshadowed by a lot of negative pieces. I don’t believe that certain journalists have an agenda, as some others do. I do believe, however, that some journalists have a dislike of us and probably enjoyed seeing us struggle at the start of the season.
We have a long and somewhat spiky history with the media, going back to the infamous "YOU HAVENT GOT A CHANCE, ARSENAL" back page from the Mirror on May 26th, 1989 (we all know what happened then) through being dragged through the gutters when Tony Adams was jailed in 1990 to the infamous original Battle of Old Trafford in the same season. Growing up the mid ‘90s, it was sometimes hard supporting a club who were, at the time, very unfashionable. Des Lynam, who famously belittled Dennis Bergkamp after he scored one of the greatest goals of his career against Newcastle was (along with “money before medals” Andy Townsend) the face of BBC, in an age before Sky ruled all football on the telly.
He was joined by Alan Hansen (to this day, still bitter about 1989) and ex Sp*rs striker, Gary Lineker, who presented Football Focus. I remember many a Saturday lunchtime spent watching my dad shout something like "F**k off, you jug-eared runt" as Gary got his cheap thrills by having a sly dig at the old enemy. And there was also Jimmy Greaves, who produced a handy cut-out-and-keep guide to goal-scoring in his weekly Sun column, which was merely a net and a ball with the classically sarcastic "PUT BALL IN NET" instruction. It was aimed at our non-flying Dutchman again, because he failed to score until a month into his Arsenal career.
We then moved on to the "ARSENE WHO?" era, which heralded a deluge of underhanded, only-acceptable-if-aimed-at-the-Arsenal, xenophobic cheap shots, Arsène's biggest crime being that he didn’t have a face to fit. His new training and diet methods were dismissed, and he hadn’t worked in these isles before, media darling Alex Ferguson famously starting his mind games with the patronising "he’s come over here from Japan, for G*d’s sake" speech, designed to belittle his French counterpart.
The critics were silenced in the best way possible, with even the most hardened journalist bowing down, as the double-winners played a style of football that had never been seen before in this country. At the start of the 2002/2003season, Arsène Wenger had the audacity to suggest his team were good enough to go a whole season without losing a game. Unthinkable, eh? When we lost to a Wayne Rooney goal (ending in itself a 30-game unbeaten run) the media went into overdrive. Twisting Arsène’s words to make him sound arrogant enough to dismiss all other opponents with a declaration of unbeaten victory, they went to town on the club and the boss. "ARROGANT ARSENAL" was the cry, and how they had loved building us up to knock us down. A couple of Man Utd players got in on the act, Rio Ferdinand declaring us too cocky when we had been top of the league, which led to them overtaking us. They called their end-of-season video "we got our trophy back". Not cocky in the slightest. I still have a copy of the Telegraph from the week after The Battle of Old Trafford II, Keown’s Revenge, with the headline screaming "KISS GOODBYE TO THE TITLE, ARSENAL". Once again, we all know what happened then.
Which brings us to the barren years. Can anyone remember the last time he or she read an Arsenal article in a newspaper that didn’t contain the word "years" and the number "six"? Some may argue that it is a back-handed compliment that people seem genuinely thrilled/surprised that a major club like ours hasn’t picked up silverware for a period as long as this. Others see it as a way to twist the knife in further, then kick us when we are down, then p*ss on us when we're on fire (but, unhelpfully, not the bit that’s actually on fire).
Up to circa 2002/2003, bad press from a bad defeat was easier to avoid. It was easy enough not to buy a newspaper, not to watch Sky Sports News, and hope the mouthy plastic Manc from work (I’m not going to add Sp*rs fan or Chav there - they couldn’t beat us back then) was sympathetic/dead. However, now with Twitter/Facebook, football apps on tap, the sensationalised, previously-mentioned Sky Sports, and, as Jamie Redknapp would say, "literally millions of football blogs," the average football fan has become over-exposed and over-reliant on football news, views and opinion. The whole six-year shtick is not, as the "Arsène who?" was, limited just to a daily newspaper. Now, when journalists and writers think they are being hilarious and original with a six-year dig, it’s in our newspaper during our coffee break, on our laptops when reading blogs, on our television when we come home and put on channel 405, and on our phones when checking Twitter or Facebook, whilst taking a 45-minute toilet break at work.
The Keown’s Revenge episode of the Battle of Old Trafford saw Arsenal become the first sports team in this country to be found guilty by media. Sky Sports News went into hyperdrive, as did the tabloids/broadsheets. However, the rolling, 24-hour coverage that Arsenal received from that TV channel had never before been seen in this country. It was impossible to escape. It did, however, work in installing a kind of "you can shove your f**kin' two points up yer a**e" attitude into fans and players alike. I remember queuing outside St Mary’s for Southampton away over Xmas that year, whilst a chorus of "Oh Sky TV is full of s**t...." echoed outside the icy ground. It’s at this time the phrase "Gooners know it’s a conspiracy" found its way into our every day use.
Let’s hope we have managed to turn a hypothetical corner in our season with the recent sequence of results. However, let’s not forget what a kicking we have taken from certain outlets for the first few months of our season. Let’s take things like the outcry when we only got 46,000 for a game against Shrewsbury, the article that said only two Arsenal players would get in the current Sp*rs side. Wilshere and Verm were conveniently left out because they were injured. Sp*rs players that were also injured were, conveniently, included. Comparing the most successful manager in Arsenal’s history to Mr Bean, and, of course, Ian Wright every week, and take offence. Build up an us-vs-them attitude.
It’s no coincidence that the away support has been the best, Newcastle aside, in recent years with all these people lining up to take pot-shots at us. It’s so much better than arguing amongst ourselves, which seems to have become the norm these days. The support at Old Trafford back in August was unrivalled, and, had it been another team’s supporters that had reacted like that, they would have been trumpeted as some sort of heroes. I wasn’t at the Bridge recently (I only like going to games where we don’t score, or where we concede eight, or lose to that lot down the road) but I’ve heard from many reliable parties that the Arsenal were playing with 12 men.
If we can build up a siege mentality and focus our energy on realising that the enemy isn’t within, and support the team as we have been, then we can find our "shove yer f**kin' two points up yer a**e" mentality. So, in the words of Jerry Springer, "take care of yourself, and each other.......... and don’t believe the bulls**t you see/hear/read in the media".
