Maguiresbridge Gooner
Is there a player at our club right now with whom the fans can identify like we could, and indeed did, years ago and who has Arsenal in his blood? I'm one of those old boys, so it might be different and easier for younger fans, but I would say a definite no. It might have been different if we'd been successful and won something over the last six or seven years, with a player or two doing a Mickey Thomas ‘it's up for grabs now’ moment, or players doing something special that would endear us to them like scoring the winner in a final or two, or on the last day of the season scoring to win the League, and indeed some of them might just do that before the season’s out to change my mind.
But there's not one player at the club at the minute that I would be really sad to see leave or shed a tear over. Is there a player now who would shed a tear over leaving, even if he had Arsenal in his blood? Obviously you don't want to see the best players go, but that would be for purely footballing or professional reasons, not sentimental ones like there were years ago.
Take Frank McClintock, Raddy, Big Tone, Wrighty, Dicko, Rocky, The Romford Pele, Bob Wilson (Willow), The Merse, Sammy Nelson, Chippy, for example, and the list goes on, players who have earned their nicknames; and there's Charlie George who stood on the North Bank as a kid and then went on to play for us, who we can still identify with even today and indeed most of the others and are emotionally attached even now. I'm sure a lot of us fans young and old have met a lot of the above legends over time and really taken to them for various reasons. I was walking up the steps to the West Upper at the last NLD at Highbury and happened to look round and there was Charlie coming trudging behind me. I asked him “are you getting it tight Charlie? Not as fit as you used to be” and he replied “too bloody right, mate” or words to that effect, I'll not say what the banter was with other fans, but Charlie took it brilliantly as usual.
I know times have changed, but will fans be doing the same to, and thinking the same of, some of the players we have now in twenty or thirty years’ time? That's if they remain here for any length of time and don't follow the Pound or Euro. Can we see any one of them becoming legends like the ones above?
What about Walcott? Can we really identify with him? The younger fans maybe for his nice boy image and his children's books, but for his football? There's Ramsey - the fans of his old club Cardiff seem to have hijacked the legendary status already. Then there's Wilshere the Great English Hope and injury-prone; can we identify with him? Can we see him as a legend? For his tweeting maybe and his tattoos. Again, his football? He hasn't exactly set the world alight so far. Jenkinson, Gibbs, etc, some of the foreigners? Is it a coincidence that none of the legends mentioned above is a foreigner? Yes, of course we have foreigners we are emotionally involved with like Thierry Henry (Titi or TH), Robert Pires (Bobby), Dennis Bergkamp (DB 10 or God), and Freddie, but can we identify with them like the English legends?
Can we see ourselves being able to identify with, and still be emotionally involved with any of the current players, or the ones we've had over the last eight years in twenty or thirty years’ time the same way we do and are with the past ones mentioned above, and be able to take a hand out of them on the way to the ground or coming up the steps to the upper tier? Unfortunately, old boys like me might not be around to find out.
