Lance Beauregarde
So, after nine long years of waiting, we finally have a trophy. Okay, it’s not the Premier League or Champions League, but it’s not the Coca Cola Rumbelows Worthington Milk Capital One League Cup either. Instead we’ve won the FA Cup, and whilst the insane influx of money into other tournaments has sucked some of the magic and romanticism out of it, it remains the oldest and most prestigious domestic cup competition in the footballing world, and therefore is not to be sniffed at.
Now, for some of you, this does not present any kind of a problem. You have defended me to the hilt, even after all the humiliating cup exists and crushing defeats to big and small teams alike, insisting that Arsenal’s perennial qualification for the Champions League in spite of financial constraints was as good as could have been hoped for. A shiny new stadium and some scintillating, if not always effective football have more than made up for the lack of silverware.
Others of you take an altogether less forgiving view - Arsenal is the third most successful club in the history of English football and nine years is too long to go without savouring the sweet taste of success, financial constraints or no. For that reason, the FA Cup victory is too little, too late. You might be grateful for the good times, but you don’t feel I am the man to take us to the next level. Some of you are of the opinion that the Cup makes for the perfect parting gesture and others of you are annoyed because it doesn’t represent the kind of success you were hoping for and serves only to give me a reason to sign a new contract. Either way, you have wanted me gone for some time now, and that has not changed.
But then there are those of you who are faced with a horrible dilemma. You are the ones for whom the ideal scenario has always been for me to stay on and steer the Good Ship Arsenal back into successful waters, but, until recently, just weren’t convinced that I could do it. Therefore, if, back in August, I’d offered you a top-four finish and the FA Cup, you would have bitten my hand off. However, if I’d then told you that, on the way, we would be five points clear at the top of the Premier League in December, only to suffer a series of humiliating away defeats which would result in our sinking as low as fifth at one point, you might have regurgitated the hand and given it back to me.
And this is the dilemma - part of you wants me to stay because I’ve delivered the trophy you so desperately craved. When you saw me soaked in Champagne, and grinning from ear to ear as the players threw me up in the air at Wembley, all you could think about was how the good times have finally returned to the club. You might have lined the streets of Islington the next day as the open-top bus drove proudly past, or gathered at the stadium and wondered if it was possible that a professional athlete really could be as drunk as Per Mertesacker seemed to be so early in the day as he belted out the songs of the North Bank in a comical, albeit entirely genuine German accent. But another part of you remembers all the times I refused to embrace a more pragmatic approach to the big games and instead bamboozled you with bizarre team selections and perplexing substitutions. You remember having to suffer the taunts from your colleagues and friends and the times you had to respond to the question, ‘how can you lot be so good one minute and so bad the next?’ with a pointed ‘how the hell am I supposed to know?’
None of us knows exactly what the future holds, but, whatever happens, it may well be the case that you will never be able to reconcile your conflicting opinions about me. For now though, you’re just going to have to try and get your head around the agonisingly contradictory notion that, for years, you’ve been frustrated because I haven’t been able to deliver a trophy, but now you’re frustrated because I have.
Ed’s note – One of our readers, Ash Read, has put together a YouTube video lasting 42 seconds of the FA Cup Final Day as told through images shared on Instagram. It combines images from 129 Instagrammers. It’s worth a look and can be viewed here.
