GoonerGirl (BB)
I love Arsenal. Not because they are flash, star-studded world-beaters who are going to win it all this season, but because they have made me smile again. At the end of two very difficult weeks for me personally, with my dad very ill in hospital, life was made just a little bit lighter and happier with the win over Manchester City.
As much as the QPR debacle seemed to echo the negativity in my family at the time, so the City result mirrors the fact that things on the hospital front are just about as good as they will ever be. In footballing terms, there are very few teams I would have liked Arsenal to have beaten more on Easter Sunday. In fact, my only regret about the result is that we didn’t win by a far more comprehensive margin.
To me, City are right up there with the very worst excesses of modern football. This buy-it-all, have-it-all, we-are-the-greatest-before-we-have-achieved-anything mentality goes completely against the ethos of the game. Whatever failings we have at Arsenal, and complaints we have about our lot, there is nothing in the world that would ever make me want our club to be run in the way Manchester City is.
I would rather be self-sustaining, even if our transfer-dealings at times frustrate the hell out of us all, than go around luring players to our club simply because we pay the most ridiculous wages imaginable to footballers who clearly don’t even come close to justifying such expenditure. Moreover the end-result of this policy, apart from the fact that, for this season at least, City will hopefully remain trophy-less, is that they have amassed a motley collection of individuals with no incentive whatsoever towards teamwork, and, in the case of Balotelli, particularly destructive characters at that. These are the footballers who were seduced by the money, and by this hackneyed belief that where there is money there will be silverware, and lots of it.
Plenty of ex-Gunners have chased the mighty Arab dollar, and did any of them sparkle against the current, much-criticised Arsenal team? Not in the game I was watching, but then it is hard to have any influence at all when you can’t even get in the starting eleven. Of course, in the deluded world of Samir Nasri, he recently claimed that he had been played far too much by Arsenal, and that by sitting on the City bench he was actually improving. Improving his bank balance certainly, but Rosicky looked twice the player Nasri was on Sunday, definitive proof that actually playing football regularly can improve you as a footballer. Who would have thought it?
I wouldn’t want any of our former players back from City, even if they paid us to take them off their hands, not just because they are money-grabbing mercenaries with over-inflated opinions of themselves based on the ludicrous bounty City have put on their heads, but actually because they aren’t remotely improved as players as a result of leaving Arsenal. In fact, arguably they have drifted into mediocrity.
All the money in the world can’t buy you respect, or seemingly happiness, judging by the sour-faced Manchester City executive contingent sat in our directors’ box on Easter Sunday. If they came hoping for three points and a cosy little chat with RvP about joining their petro-fuelled bid for world domination, they clearly didn’t get what they bargained for, at least on the former and, hopefully, not on the latter either.
My hope that Robin remains at Arsenal beyond this summer, and next summer and a few more summers besides, is far greater than any amount of money City have in mind to offer him. His commitment to the Arsenal cause this season, allied with the way he has matured into the role of captain, and of course his 33 goals to date, makes him our latest priceless asset, so naturally that puts him very firmly on City’s radar as a result. However, should we qualify for the Champions League, and City fail in their bid to win the title, then the only reason he would have to leave us for them would be for money. If it was for footballing ambition, he would go to Barcelona.
Admittedly football is a short career where the majority of players will spend more of their life retired than in action, and thus maximising earning potential is something hammered into most professionals by their agents from an early age, (although in the case of Nasri that obviously means that his greatest “improvement” will come when he is sat in his sprawling chateau during those twilight years), but it is hardly as if Arsenal pay the minimum wage; perhaps if they did, our memberships and ticket prices would be a bit more affordable for the average fan.
I don’t think anyone would blame RvP for wanting assurances that Arsenal will once more become contenders for trophies before he puts pen to paper; it is nothing more than we fans are asking for as we approach what will be a vital summer for the Gunners, but Arsenal will always be a far better bet for RvP than moving to a club where the love of money is the only thing their players have in common. For everything City have spent, they lie just ten points ahead of us, went out of the Champions League before us, and I wouldn’t mind betting they are in for an even bigger summer of changes than we are, even though all previous petro-fuelled overhauls haven’t yielded what the owners expected.
Arsenal are far from perfect - we all know that - but I am still a defiantly proud fan, and when your family is thrown some real life-and-death stuff, results like Sunday’s are a blissful haven of happiness that only the emotionally-charged rollercoaster world of Arsenal can provide. Keep it up boys, please!
