From Glenn Dalton : Arsenal fans have a bigger role to play
Dear Myles,
I love your work and enjoy every article you post but I must admit I find myself disagreeing with the majority of your work today, more than I have ever found myself doing so in the past.
I notice that you don\’t post many reader\’s mails that disagree with your point of view or perhaps that\’s just because you don\’t get many that do disagree! I don\’t expect you to post this mail but please keep posting your thoughts – your web page will always be one of my first to visit on a daily basis. Thank you.
I\’m not an Arsenal fan. I am a Liverpool fan.
I moved from Ireland to Islington as the Celtic Tiger was put on a life-support machine.
However, I have always been an avid Arsene Wenger fan and have closely followed everything he has done and achieved. Kenny Dalglish and NESV are building our club back using a very similar model to that of Wenger\’s, who in fairness has built Arsenal using a very similar system and football style as the Liverpool of old. Pass and move – it\’s the Liverpool groove.
I go to most Arsenal home games now.
I go to some Liverpool games if I can get tickets and have the time to travel! I watch every Arsenal and Liverpool game that\’s on TV.
I don\’t have or want a season ticket for Arsenal but I manage to get a ticket on the day at the box office for face value.
Well, that was the case up until the Fulham game which was the first game of the season that was ‘sold out\’ so I ended up buying a ticket from a Gooner called Mike and we enjoyed the game and a pint beforehand.
A few wins on the spin and the fans were back in full force!
That\’s the difference, I suppose, between Southern and Northern clubs.
Northerners support their clubs. They schedule their week around the weekend\’s fixture. Win or Lose, hail or snow, recession or boom they are there in full voice. Southern club fans, not all of course, are fair weather supporters who support their in-form club with a huge percentage only interested in instant success and don\’t think of the consequences or costs of their ridiculous and ever changing demands.
I encourage any Arsenal fan to take a trip to Anfield on the Saturday and then to Ashburton Grove on the Sunday or vice versa (if the fixtures permit) and post their thoughts on the differences of the two experiences. I brought my wife to Anfield recently. Watching her bounce to the Luis Suarez song was very funny indeed. Liverpool drew. She had a great day, though. She hates football.
Recently your thoughts, in my opinion, have done nothing but encourage the most pessimistic views regarding Arsenal, and I feel you have responsibility to your club as a fan and because you have so many readers who think of your view as gospel.
That\’s not your fault I know. Of course, you are entitled to write whatever you think or feel but if you took 5 minutes out with less shooting from the hip I think your points could have far more structure, less mistakes and would be taken with more credibility and less ridicule from Arsenal fans I talk to at games.
I remember reading articles suggesting Wenger out, Owen Coyle in! Van Persie isn\’t good enough to play for any other top European club!!! (Can you please post these two articles again? I can\’t find them using your archive function). You possibly still think that RVP isn\’t good enough and Owen Coyle should be the gaffer. I hope not.
Fans should stop, think and then come to an informed conclusion and not one derived from the tabloids. Whatever their opinion is though they should continue to support the club they love.
Wenger is in my opinion the best manager to manage in the EPL.
His advantage at the start of his Arsenal career was exploiting inefficiencies in the transfer market by buying better players that were not English. Liverpool did this in the 70s and 80s by buying Welsh, Scottish and Irish players. You get first mover advantage until, as is always the case, the inefficiency in the market is no longer there.
I recommend your readers either read or watch (if you have not already) Moneyball written by Michael Lewis.
The manager (star of the book) of the Oakland A\’s, Billy Beane, holds Wenger as one of his idols, exploits inefficiencies in the baseball market to field a team at 1/3 of the cost to the Yankees and goes on the longest winning streak in the history of baseball. Sound familiar? It\’s considered one of the biggest sporting achievements in world sport.
The book is far superior in detail than the film. Wenger is always looking for the next inefficiency.
He thinks he\’s found it. His books are balanced and every market around the world has collapsed except the football market. The new financial fair play regulations are imminent. No club is better positioned than Arsenal for this.
I think Wenger has been perhaps caught out by how long it would take for the football market to collapse or how long it would take for the new rules to be implemented. He needs time. However, in the meantime he has made sure Arsenal (In my opinion) have the best keeper, right back, centre half, centre midfielder, striker, stadium, accounts and manager (second to King Kenny of course) in the EPL.
What they don\’t have are the best fans. You can hear a pin drop at times at Ashburton Grove (I never call it ‘The Emirates\’).
Make some songs up, sing them when your players are having a stinker, and give them more support. No player wants to make a mistake. Get behind your club and when the guy who sits next to you doesn\’t turn up because you have lost 8-2 to United the week before let him know about it when he comes back after the win at Stamford Bridge.
Sometimes you have to look at yourself (the fans) before pointing the finger elsewhere. I think you can set an example here, Myles, and possibly think before you type at times. Sometimes you may find yourself changing your opinion or view. If it means you change or amend it once then it\’s an exercise worth doing. Be careful for what you wish for and remember clubs who chase instant success very rarely achieve exactly that in the long term. Sometimes even try to focus on the positives of what you Arsenal fans have which is the envy of the majority of the football world.
As I write this Arsenal side are 4th in the League and in the last 16 of the Champions League. Hardly a crisis!
Time for the fans to make themselves heard, methinks.
You will be amazed at the difference it can make. You have the medium at your disposal to get the ball rolling.
In Arsene I certainly trust, and as long as there are doubters this Liverpool and Wenger fan will be able to pick up face value tickets 10 minutes before kick off to see Arsene\’s team play.
Thanks again, Myles, for sharing all your very enjoyable posts and opinions.
Myles says:
You’re asking me to think before I type?
That might happen from time to time. My first thought here would be : avoid hero-worship of managers – and bloggers.
Hero-worship is immature, although maybe we all need somebody to look up to.I’m just a bloke like you, but much older. I’m no messiah. Mine is one opinion among many and opinion makes the world go round. I’m not as smart as many of the ANR readers who have become my friends.
Managers are fallible men,not gods, men who make mistakes all the time. Yes, it’s very challenging and frustrating to manage a football club, so anybody who lasts more than five years is good or very cunning or both.
Wenger has now made Arsenal his own operation. He will always make a profit by selling the best players to keep his job, and developing kids, which is where he gets his kicks.
After reading this article about Stan Kroenke, I’ve lowered my expectations permanently.
Stan Kroenke is a clown and a loser and this club will win nothing while Kroenke owns it. But it will make money.
Having accepted that, I’m much happier.
Why be frustrated? It’s only football. It’s the most important unimportant thing in the world.
Every person talking about Song or Drogba or Harry Redknapp is someone who is not talking about being raped by the bankocracy, not talking about endless wars to make millionaire shareholders richer, not talking about the bungles of shameless charlatans like Blair, Campbell and Mandelson. Gordon Brown, now hiding permanently in Fife, is the worst Chancellor in British history.
Football is a circus which is televised daily to take your mind off all that. And Arsenalisation is actually Americanisation.
However, I still go to some games, meet people, see a goal or two, and go home. It’s not life and death, just an itch I scratch in cyberspace.
Thanks for writing, Glenn.
Welcome to London. We need sensible young men here. You and your Mrs should have joined us sooner.
For 100 years football was the cultural expression of the Scottish, Irish and English working classes, and it started in the North, where fans still care, still cheer, still love to get involved, to help their teams. ArseDisney is the opposite of that : sterile, sanitised, corporate, boring, over-organised, a day or night out for tourists as much as for Gooners.
I’m told many Irish businessmen are coming to London to go bankrupt.
BTW, the Podolski deal is almost done.
He can play in Van Persie’s position as well as Gervinho’s position. That’s why Wenger has signed him. He’s a very good goalscorer and only 26.