Charlie Ashmore
(Ed’s note – The Gooner and onlinegooner.com is a platform for all Arsenal views. I have mine. Others have theirs and are certainly not always the same. Some agree it is time to change manager but do not agree on how it can or should be influenced by those supporters who agree. Some are perfectly happy with Arsène Wenger as Arsenal boss. It should be remembered that we are a platform for all supporter views and do not have an agenda, just individual views and opinions. Here is the text of an email sent to me by a regular contributor to demonstrate that we will publish views from all sides of the spectrum)
Having read your piece online, what can I say other than that I cannot disagree more strongly. You are wrong on so many levels and your invitation to an opponent to the Wenger must go brigade to respond misses the point entirely. That there is a legitimate debate to be had about Wenger's future cannot sensibly be questioned. If I am honest I am not sure entirely where I stand on it at the moment but my thoughts are undoubtedly coloured by the frustration I feel at Saturday's events and in particular the team selection. I have written many times about the manner in which the glitz and glamour of the Champions League has seduced many to the detriment of the domestic campaigns, something I am afraid many of the very same supporters who will bemoan Saturday's selection themselves bought into. That the mood is low after Saturday is inevitable but that is never the best time to fix a point of view.
Do you speak for the majority as you imply in your piece (certainly in your headline?) How can you possibly say that? You may speak for the majority of those with whom you regularly speak/watch football but that is not the issue. Even the largest recognised protest group, the Black Scarf Movement. Unless and until you or some other agitators can get 20-25,000 of those who pay their money and turn up week in week out to join a protest march or sign a petition or whatever along those lines, neither you nor the BSM can profess to speak for anything other than a disaffected minority (however loud that minority chooses to make itself).
As to the main point of your piece, whatever the question (and as I say I am quite happy to concede the legitimacy of the debate as to AWs future) the answer is never that which you suggest. If it be the case that you are so dissatisfied at the team, the manager and the running of the club, surely the proper answer is for you and all those who support your argument to simply boycott the club (matches, merchandise and all) until that to which you object is changed. If there is indeed a majority, the ground will be largely empty and silent, the tills will stand largely unused and your point will be well made.
However to incite the sort of approach you do in your piece, recognising as you do the inflammatory result is not just plain wrong but frankly irresponsible. In my experience, the violence you indicate which may follow is far more likely to come from those who support your approach than oppose it. Certainly on those occasions I have had cause to "debate" the behaviour of some fans at matches, it has not been me or those siding with me who have threatened violence.
Inside the stadium on match day is absolutely not the time for a protest of this sort. Whatever your views about the situation, the 90 mins of the match are sacrosanct and the job of every supporter inside the stadium is to help the team win however inadequate you may feel the manager has rendered it. Your proposed course of action will not only not help the team win but will actually make it harder for them. It is ironic indeed that you advocate a course which is, whether deliberately or otherwise, guaranteed to affect performance such that the team will fail to achieve whatever it might be capable of and then having helped to achieve that failure, rely on it to blame the manager. Surely your argument would be all the stronger if as supporters you have done everything you can to help the team and yet it still falls short despite your best efforts.
The negativity around the ground, the willingness to boo the team at every opportunity has only helped to make them perform timidly and ineffectually and especially at home - surely you can see that? You may argue that professional footballers should be big enough and ugly enough to get on with it regardless of the mood in the stands. That is both unfair and ridiculous. If a player has the option of a risky pass forward or a safe pass sideways, is he really likely to take the risky option knowing he is going to be booed if he gets it wrong (and it only takes a few thousand to boo for it to sound loud). So he takes the safe option - might that possibly be an explanation for our increasingly ponderous play? I doubt those who boo the team understand their contribution to it but it is real nonetheless.
I do not buy into this idea of wishing for failure in order to facilitate change - it is utterly incomprehensible to me.
The real irony in all this is that those who support your line continue to trot out the ridiculous "we want our Arsenal back" after performances like Saturday's. What they fail to appreciate (as I have said before) is that this Arsenal and the sort of performances we have witnessed this season is much closer to the true spirit of Arsenal's history. The Arsenal they want back is actually Wenger's Arsenal, the one he created for us and one which represented the best footballing side we are likely ever to see in English football and unlikely ever to be repeated. I would like to think you will rethink your proposal and withdraw it though I suspect it is too late already as the genie is out of the bottle and there are clearly some who think it a good idea. I would not want to be in your shoes, feeling responsible for any injury, arrest or other potentially life-changing event which may occur because people have taken your idea and run with it.
I would like to think you will rethink your proposal and withdraw it though I suspect it is too late already as the genie is out of the bottle and there are clearly some who think it a good idea. I would not want to be in your shoes, feeling responsible for any injury, arrest or other potentially life-changing event which may occur because people have taken your idea and run with it.
Time will tell - we remain opposite sides of the same coin, even if currently we appear united only in our love of the Arsenal Football Club, though not necessarily the current transient occupants of it.
