Ronnie Simmons
The media are sensationalist, it’s what they do, it’s how they sell papers. Pundits are knee-jerk and excessive, such a view point keeps them in a job. Supporters are often emotive which can lead to being swayed by stories and cliches spouted out by the media and pundits. For those with some rational thought and objectivity, don’t fall for it.
For years the papers trotted out the clichés about a soft underbelly, getting out-muscled up north etc whenever we lost of game north of Watford, seemingly in some cases completely irrespective of what actually happened in the game. Yet, whenever we show some ‘fighting’ spirit and a player gets sent off they immediately trot out their ‘XXth player to be sent off under Wenger’ line. A nice sensational number and rarely applied with context of games Wenger has presided over. Incompetent journalism at it’s best.
The latest iteration of Arsenal cliché is about Per Mertesacker. You rarely see a line written about our BFG without the words ‘slow’, ‘cumbersome’ or ‘oil tanker’ included. Now, I know Per has made some mistakes since signing but I don’t remember too many (if any) situations where his lack of pace has specifically caused us a problem. Also, not one person has referenced the fact that he has played a limited number of games in the league and is settling in. These are the same people who would have sold Vidic and Evra after they initially struggled at Man U. I would have preferred for Per to not have made any mistakes since he came into the team, but he has, and I’m not prepared to give up on him and call for his transfer so early on. Likewise Santos, Park and Benyoun.
Not all players hit the ground running like Wright or Ljungberg. Look at Pires, Henry and Bergkamp’s first 10 games at our club – not one of us would say with any confidence they would have had such legendary careers at Arsenal. Now, I’m not for one second putting the BFG in that category but we should know better than most that having patience with new but established international players can pay off.
There’s been enough in-fighting with us Gooners in the past six months (for reasons we’ve been over a million times already) and, at a point when I can see the team unity is probably the highest it’s been for a long time, we should get behind every single player and not be swayed by lazy, slack, knee-jerk, ill-informed, sensationalist stories about them.
